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RUDOLF HAUSCHKA

The

Nature of Substance

Translated from the German by

MARJORIE SPOCK and
MARYT. RICHARDS

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS
LONDON

SUBSTANZLEHRE

First Published in English by
Vincent Stuart and John M. Watkins Ltd. in 1966

Second Edition 1983, published by
Rudolf Steiner Press, 38 Museum Street,
London WCiA iLP

All rights are reserved.

No part of this publication
may be reproduced without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hauschka, Rudolf
The nature of substance. — 2nd ed.
t, Chemistry

1. Title II. Substanzlehre, English
540 QD31 2

ISBN 0-85440-424-4

Printed and bound in Great Britain at
The Cainelot Press Ltd, Southampton

Contents

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION

(iy66) vii

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND ENGLISH EDITION

(1983) X

I THEORIES OF THE NATURAL SCIENTIFIC AGE

ON THE PRIMALITY OF MATTER I

II ANCIENT IDEAS ABOUT THE NATURE OF

SUBSTANCE 5

III NEW IDEAS ON THE PRIMALITY OF SPIRIT II

IV THE PLANTS 21

V THE CARBOHYDRATES 24

VI CARBON, HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN 35

VII SCENTS (ETHERIC OILS) AND RESINS 46

VIII THE FATTY OILS 49

IX PROTEIN 53

X NITROGEN 56

XI THE COSMIC NATURE OF EARTH’S SUBSTANCE 60

XII STAR PATTERNS AND EARTHLY SUBSTANCES 67

XIII THE ANIMALS 78

XIV PLANT POISONS (ALKALOIDS) 8l

XV THE VITAMINS 84

XVI COAL TAR CHEMISTRY ~ REALM OF MIRROR-

IMAGES 102

XVII HIGH DILUTIONS AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS 1 10

XVIII MINERALS Il8

XIX LIMESTONE AND SILICA 121

XX ALUMINIUM AND PHOSPHORUS I32

XXI THE MINERAL CROSS 1 39

XXII ALKALIS AND HALOGENS I42

XXIII MAGNESIA AND SULPHUR 149

XXIV THE OCEANIC CROSS 155

XXV THE METALS 158

XXVI COPPER I64

CONTENTS

XXVII TIN X^7

XXVIII LEAD X7°

XXIX IRON X75

XXX QUICKSILVER IS?

XXXI SILVER l$2

xxxn GOLD X97

XXXIII THE BROTHERS OF IRON 203

XXXIV THE CHILDHOOD OF METAL5 2I^

XXXV THE SPIRAL OF CREATION 223

XXXVI CONCLUSION 232

BIBLIOGRAPHY 2'^

Foreword to the First English
Edition ( 1966)

This book is an attempt to show that an appropriate study of
the nature of matter itself will overcome the materialistic
view of nature now held almost everywhere.

It may appear a contradiction in terms to speak of a non-
materialistic science of chemistry ; does not a branch of knowledge
that deals with the nature of substances necessarily base itself on
the laws of matter?

It is far from the purpose of this work to deny their validity.
Indeed, material phenomena and the laws that govern them will
form the point of departure for our treatment. We shall, however,
pay the closest attention to the limits within which any fact
obtains - something which present-day science all too easily
neglects.

The author has been at work for decades on experiments which
have yielded a new perspective on the nature of matter and hence
suggest a new orientation of the sciences. But eyes that educate
themselves to qualitative seeing need no experiments to view
long-familiar phenomena in a fresh light.

Overcoming a materialistic view of nature means learning to
see phenomena freshly, practising a way of looking that is an
active ‘thinking into’ things - not merely a recording of measure,
weight and number, followed by explanations that imprison
facts in a rigid world of hypotheses and theory.

A former materialistic emphasis on naturalism in German art
led perceptive observers to give a warning against this trend as
ruinous to painting and sculpture. They pointed out that, by
naturalistic standards, colour photography could be called the
peak of possible artistic achievement rather than simply the
marvel of technology it is.

An artist who merely copies nature, no matter how perfectly,
is a technician, not an artist. Genuine artists live in the objects of
their study and create them freshly and revealingly again. This
type of creating calls for something that goes beyond trained
hand or eye: it requires vivid activity of soul and spirit. The

vii

FOREWORD TO FIRST ENGLISH EDITION (1966)

warmer and more intensive this becomes, the more creative is the
artist. So he penetrates ever closer to the heart of truth, out of
which the reality of outer nature also sprang. Is there any reason
why science could not benefit equally from this artistic approach
to facts? In our view it should, and by so doing satisfy the justified
demand of the human spirit for creativity in all its functioning.

To record what has been observed is in itself neither a way to
truth nor even genuine experience. And for our purposes theories
are worse than useless. The world of ideas which comes to light
in man must be brought to bear on his perceptions if he is to
achieve real knowledge. A creative element, an active conscious¬
ness, gives itself to the world in a way that makes of every per¬
ception a living whole, bearing the stamp of essential experience,

Goethe said: ‘All experience is necessarily produced, brought
forth, created.’ Speaking of his journeys to Italy, he remarked
that though he had seen nothing new, his way of seeing was
itself new.

The public has long given evidence of a wish and need for an
approach to chemistry imbued with Goethean liveliness. The
author feels impelled to try to meet this need. Especially the
English-speaking countries seemed to challenge him to help in
laying the basis for a premonitory experience of the spirit behind
nature. As a student of Rudolf Steiner he embarked on a Goethean
line of research that led to a picture of the universe by no means
at odds with the orthodox one, but rather tending to round out
and complete it.

The book first appeared in German. The public responded
with a degree of interest that has so far led to three German
editions, as well as to two related books on nutrition and healing.

The following thoughts were uppermost in my mind as I
pursued the goal described above. My presentation was to be
kept general and easy to understand, without sacrificing scientific
character. Hence technical terms were avoided as far as possible,
along with the standardized style common to scientific works.
On the other hand, I was concerned to capture the reader’s
immediate interest for my subject-matter with vivid descriptions
that would bring home to him how alive, how relevant, it really
is. In this connection I want to thank the translators, Marjorie

viii

FOREWORD TO FIRST ENGLISH EDITION ( 1 966)

Spock and Mary T. Richards, for preserving the life and colour
of the style I developed.

My thanks are also due to the publisher, Vincent Stuart, for
the interest shown in making possible and preparing this English
edition of my book.

Rudolf Hausciika, D.Sc.

Boll, June 196s

Foreword to the Second English
Edition ( 1983 )

Since this book was first published, over thirty years ago in
Germany, and sonic twenty years ago in English transla¬
tion, interest has grown significantly in scientific views, like
those of the late I )r Rudol fHauschka, that direct! y challenge the
assumptions ot materialistic science. This volume is being
reprinted, with minor corrections, with the purpose of
stimulating this interest further.

It must be borne in mind, however, that since the time when
the text was written, research in biological chemistry and
physics, notably vitamins (see Chapter XV), has progressed
enormously, and many basic questions have been resolved.

The main reason for delaying the reprinting of this volume
derives from uncertainties about, and lack of independent
corroboration of, the various experiments described. It has not
proved possible to repeat them based simply on the all too brief
and generalized descriptions given in the text, or so far to trace
the original experimental documents*

While this m ay detract from the scientific merit of the book, it
must be appreciated that, on the other hand, it has not been
demonstrated conclusively that the experiments cannot be
repeated in their original form. The subtle and delicate effects
within the realm of the four ethers cannot be so readily
demonstrated in laboratory experiments as purely inorganic or

FOREWORD TO SECOND ENGLISH EDITION ( I 98 3 )

electromagnetic forces can. The Science Group of the
Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain is continuing to seek
to clarify this vital issue.

Hence the Science Group considers that the reprinting of this
volume meanwhile is justified subject to this written qualifica¬
tion, and that many of Dr Hauschka’s imaginative insights and
seminal ideas contained herein are in themselves a most
valuable contribution to our scientific understanding of
chemistry and the living world. The Group welcomes any
written experimental evidence, either for or against the subject
matter of this book, in particular published reports or articles.
Correspondence should be addressed in the first place to the
Secretary of the Group, Rudolf Steiner House, 35 Park Road,
London NWi 6XT.

June 1983

Robert Kersey Green

CHAPTER ONE

Theories of the Natural Scientific Age
on the Primality of Matter

lowledge of matter has grown incredibly in the past ccn -

JL\^turies. It is natural to ask what called forth this sudden,
avalanche-like progress in the exact sciences. If one considers
such heroes of recent centuries of science as Lavoisier, Ber¬
zelius, Avogadro, Liebig, Whdler and others, one concludes that
problems of matter were never studied with such power of ob¬
servation and logic. One gets the impression that this surprising
state of affairs is due to mankind’s having reached a new stage
of consciousness* The dawning of this change in outlook began
to be noticeable in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, in the persons of Galileo, Newton and Kepler. Experi¬
mental research started to limit itself ever more narrowly to
weighing, measuring and counting* A quantitative emphasis laid
hold of science* But while facts learned from experimenting
were distilled into conclusions that were supposed to permit no
excursions outside the realm of the visible, these went more and
more in the direction of theories and hypotheses that could not
be physically proved. The result was a quantitative and mechan¬
istic world-conception based on hypothesis and logic*

Haeckel's researches and Darwin’s theories of descent fitted
exactly into this materialistic picture of the world*

It lias become a matter of course to think of matter in terms
of atomic structure. The prevailing view is that matter is built
of atoms, and we assume that atoms, or even more primary
particles, are eternal. The law of the conservation of matter has
been regarded as 011c of the most fundamental laws of nature.
What facts was it based on?

It was Avogadro who discovered that hydrogen and orygen
always combine in the same ratio.

Two parts of hydrogen plus one part of oxygen equal two
parts of water- vapour. Amounts of hydrogen or oxygen in
excess of this ratio remain unchanged in the reaction. Further
experiments showed that these simple combinations can be

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

doubled or otherwise multiplied, giving rise to the law of simple
and multiple proportions. Manganese, for example, combines
with oxygen in the following ratios:

i : i Mn 4* O = MnO (manganese oxide)

2:3 2Mn+30 = Mn203 (manganese sesquioxide)

1:2 Mn+20 = Mn02 (manganese dioxide)

1:3 Mn-F30 = Mn03 (manganese trioxide)

2:7 2Mn+70 = Mn207 (manganese heptoxide)

The logical mind now reacts as follows: according to Avo-
gadro, two litres of hydrogen combine with one litre of oxygen.
Similarly, two cc. of hydrogen combine with one cc. of
oxygen, and two cmm. of hydrogen with one cmm. of oxygen.
This process may be followed to the point of indivisibility, in
which case two indivisible quanta of hydrogen combine with
one indivisible quantum of oxygen - i.e., two atoms of hydrogen
combine with one atom of oxygen.

Since it has been found that two litres of hydrogen weigh
twice 0-09 grams, and a litre of oxygen 1*43 grams (approxi¬
mately sixteen times as much), we can say that two grammes of
hydrogen plus sixteen grammes of oxygen add up to eighteen
grammes of water. These weight ratios came to be termed
atomic or molecular weights. This lent the atom a dubious
reality and endowed it with a permanence of sorts. Avogadro’s
glorious rhythmic-musical, dynamic law becomes rigidificd for
no good reason into a spatial-material conception - that of a
world composed of atoms. What began as a numerical relation¬
ship became a fixed and static picture of substantial particles.

It is not hard to see how the popularizing of these theories and
conclusions could give rise to a world conception based on an
assumed indestructibility of matter. But all serious scientific
research, too, was built on the same assumption. Kant and Laplace
brought out their theory of a primal nebula, composed of primal
matter. This nebula was assumed to contain all the atoms of
which our present earth and universe are built.

Past decades did not regard this conception as problematical,
but they did have trouble explaining how life could possibly
have originated in such a cosmos. Many theories were advanced,

THEORIES OF THE NATURAL SCIENTIFIC AGE

with the consensus that life must have resulted from a chance but
complex constellation of atoms.

According to Haeckel and Darwin, the life thus produced
went on and developed into ever new and different forms, to the
point of creating a nervous system and a brain that became an
organ able to produce what we call psychic and spiritual functions.

These ideas are not restricted to scientists; in the course of time
they become common property, and every layman was picturing
a universe supposedly built of pre-existing matter.

The discovery of radium and the study of phenomena asso¬
ciated with it came close to shattering this world conception, for
it was found that radium did not obey the law of the conservation
of matter. It disintegrates into electricity, warmth, light and
various substances such as lead, helium and other elements.
Belief in the indestructibility of the atom was rudely shaken by
these findings. But radiology, as developed by Lord Rutherford
and Bohr, adopted the view that matter is composed of still
smaller particles than atoms. The atom has a nucleus, possibly
charged with positive electricity (protons and neutrons, the
protons being charged with positive electricity), which is
surrounded and circled by units called electrons.

Radium gives off three kinds of rays, known as alpha, beta and
gamma rays. Alpha rays arc composed of particles of matter
originating in atomic nuclei. Beta rays consist, of electrical
particles, electrons. Gamma rays arc electro-magnetic radiations,
similar to those of light but of much shorter wave-length. Under
certain conditions alpha particles can produce waimth. The
disintegration of matter into higher than material components
such as warmth, light and electricity was explained by postulating
nuclei and electrons. Theories of the atomic structure of matter
and the conservation of mass were thus able to celebrate their
triumphant vindication on a new level.

Further weight was lent to the atomic-electronic view by
discoveries of which Planck’s quantum theory was one - though
actually it brings nothing more than the rhythmical quality of
matter and material processes to expression.

These developments were greeted by many devoted university
research men with the greatest enthusiasm, for they hoped to

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

find in them clues to the solution of the riddles of man and
universe. But they often found, after a lifetime of the most
devoted effort, that the path they were following led to a very
one-sided truth. Despite its grandeur, this cosmos of atoms
simply could not provide the sure footing the soul of man needs
in order to take its proper place in the world order. To have
their ardent crusade for truth end in the resigned conclusion that
human beings were after all nothing more than a chance product
of swirling atoms and electrons seemed to rob human nature of
its dignity. This dignity requires that at least equal attention
should be paid to that missing aspect of the truth which modem
science has exiled to the spheres of philosophy or religion.

As things stood, single realms of knowledge had inevitably to
grow ever further apart, whereas they should have joined forces
to create a harmonious picture of the world in which each shed
light upon the others.

CHAPTER TWO

Ancient Ideas about the Nature of Substance

People seem generally inclined to regard early concepts of the
nature of matter as primitive and childish, indeed , we are
particularly proud that present-day culture and knowledge have
advanced so far beyond the past in this respect. But anyone who
gives serious study to ancient civilizations by way of existing writ¬
ings, buildings and sculpture is amazed at the wealth of wisdom
and skill they evidence.

Take, for example, the Egyptian pyramids and temples. They
reveal, apart from their obvious artistic merits, such wonders of
mathematical and technological capacity as to make it impossible
to call their creators primitive or childlike. They contain pillars,
columns and statuary hewn out of solid blocks of granite weigh¬
ing as much as twenty-five tons. Modern engineering, for all its
fine technical equipment, would not find it at all easy to handle
or transport such gigantic blocks. And the astounding fact is
that there arc no granite quarries anywhere near these pyramids
and temples. The closest one is at Aswan, approximately six
hundred miles further up the Nile. To realize that the granite
blocks were nevertheless transported all that distance is indeed
thrilling. It seems clear that the Egyptians must have possessed
capacities which we have lost.

Is there not ample reason to review our belief that man has
developed in all respects from a primitive animal-like condition
to the heights of our present scientific age? Is it really so naive
to credit the possibility that ancient peoples possessed powers
which we have lost and must now try to recover with the right
use of our intelligence?

There is indeed every reason to think that the men of pre¬
historic times lived in a very different state of consciousness and
were carried along to a great extent by cosmic forces, which
endowed them with strength and wisdom far beyond our own.
We can recognize that evolution not only brought man his new
capacity for thinking, but with it the decline of other powers he
once possessed. It is certain that earth-dwellers of the period

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE
following what is called the Flood by some, and by others the
end of the Ice Age, had a totally different consciousness from
ours. Man of that time had no intellectual capacity whatever.
He possessed instead the power to perceive a supersensible world
of which modern man is unaware.

We are speaking here of a time prior to the writing of the
Vedas, when the original Aryans brought the first cultural
impulse from the mountains of Central Asia to what is now called
India. The supersensible world and its inhabitants were as real to
people of that period as is the physical world to present-day
humanity. But then the realms of pure spirit were everything,
the earth and its kingdoms negligible, unreal - ‘Maya* or illusion,
the least significant aspect of creation. The continent of Asia
was the ‘lowest heaven’. Self-awareness of the kind we have today
was alien to these early Indians. They felt themselves one with
the divine, instruments through which the breath of heaven
pulsated. This was the time recorded in the Vedas, though the
account, like other such mythological traditions as are found in
the Edda and the Kalcvala, was written down only at a much
later period. They indicate that the ancient Indians had no concept
of personal freedom, in the sens.? that they were incapable of
making decisions based on their own judgment. They felt them¬
selves supported and permeated by the divine. Not only were
the thoughts they had more in the nature of what we would call
dreams, but their deeds were the expression of the divine will,
not of their own.

Later periods of culture were characterized by an awakening
interest in the earth and in man’s natural surroundings. Man
descended step by step into matter. The early Persians, for
example, developed the rudiments of agriculture and began to
cultivate the soil. Zarathustra, who was recognized throughout
this epoch of history as its teacher, taught his people how to breed
the food plants that still form our chief source of nourishment.
The Zend-Avesta may be called the first agricultural textbook.

As interest in earthly matters increased, contact with the divine
world waned. It would, however, still have seemed very strong
by present standards, continuing as it did for some time to be
the decisive guide in all man’s earthly activity.

ANCIENT IDEAS ABOUT THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

In the following cultural period only a select few, such as
Egypt’s priest-kings, were still able to receive divine illumination
and to transmute it into earthly action. The capacity to do so was
carefully nurtured in regulating time of birth, special educational
measures, and subjection to a rigorous training in the Mystery
schools.

This development continued through the Grecian period.
Spiritual perception grew ever fainter, even in the case of trained
initiates.

Today all contact with the spiritual world is lost. All that
remains of it is a dim memory recorded in various religious
writings, myths, sagas, fairy tales and dreams. Faculties such as
‘second sight’ and the like, still occasionally encountered among
primitive peoples and even here and there in Europe, are the last
vanishing remnants of a once sublime view of the spiritual facts
underlying all material phenomena. These faculties are atavistic
and out of keeping with the times.

A review of these great developments indicates that divine
forces which once approached man from without, from spiritual
heights, and which he obeyed unquestioningly, underwent a
transformation into powers later found within the soul of man
himself, powers to be developed and guided by his own initiative
and judgment. The ability to think, self-awareness, and individual
freedom were among their fruits, acquired at the cost of sacri¬
ficing heavenly wisdom, the fruit of earlier clairvoyance.

Traces of this development are to be found on every hand. At
one time the social order, communal life and relationships were
formed according to the will of the gods, clairvoyantly explored.
The peoples of ancient India and Persia sought revelations of the
divine will and obeyed them implicitly. Priests of the Chaldeans
and the early Egyptians read in the stars what the gods ordered,
and directed every phase of the common life accordingly. Even
in historical times Greek clairvoyant observation noted and
recorded how the Erinyes or Furies persecuted those who had
acted in defiance of the will of the gods. Modern man no longer
perceives Erinyes, but he does sense in his heart the bad conscience
that reproaches him for letting down his standards. Anyone who
reads Homer’s account of how Pallas Athene approaches Achilles

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

and whispers in his ear what he should do, or other recitals of
heroes being guided by the gods, can scarcely avoid the im¬
pression that the Trojan war was really a war of spiritual beings
who simply used men like puppets to fight their battles on the
earth*

The differentiated macrocosmic forces which worked in and
through man, and which he experienced as separate divinities,
were as though 'turned outside in’ in the course of evolution, to
reappear within the human soul They became man’s own
activity, instead of continuing to affect him from without* This
change did not, of course, occur at the same time in all parts of
the world. Greece was the place where it was most conspicuous.

Plato, who experienced his ideas as spiritual visions, may be
regarded as the last initiate of early times. The harmony of the
spheres was not an abstraction in his mind or just a convenient
means of drawing contrasts between cosmic law-abidingness and
earthly licence; it was real spiritual music. In his view, the world
of matter evolved out of a higher, spiritual realm.

This is the quintessence of many old myths which picture the
creation of the world. We will not go further into this here, but
merely point out the significant fact that the concept of a gradual
dcnsification of matter even found its way into Greek philosophy.
This descent of more ethereal elements (fire, light and air) was
thought of as a suffusion of matter with spiritual elements, and it
was experienced in sublime imaginative pictures. But Plato must
have begun to feel that the old delineations were no longer
adequate. His pupil, Aristotle, was, in fact, the first to try to cast
this ancient visionary wisdom, of which only fragments still
remained, in the mould of logical ideas. This is the clue to
Aristotle’s teaching, and most especially to his doctrine of the
elements.

In the light of spiritual history it can be seen that when Aristotle
speaks of air he means more than the mixture of oxygen, nitro¬
gen and other gases which we moderns have in mind. His concept
was a much broader one that embraced the active forces in which
air and all the gaseous elements originate. When he spoke of
water he was not referring to the eH2G’ of modem chemistry,
but to the whole third phase of material creation, the fluid ele-

ANCIENT IDEAS ABOUT THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

ment and everything contained within it, including chemical
activity* Fire, air, water, earth: these were the milestones in the
great process of material evolution.

This life-permeated outlook had to be sacrificed in the course
of the following two millennia to an abstract view which enabled
tliinking to become an independent faculty, free from the in¬
fluence of the earlier visionary cosmic knowledge* Ali that was
left were the four purely physical ‘aggregate states* of matter,
with heat soon to be dispossessed of its reality* The world of
qualities and action once inseparable from concepts of the
elements had to sink out of sight, so that the mind could be
schooled exclusively in sense-perception.

Aristotle's doctrines remained the basis of knowledge until well
on in the Middle Ages. But they grew ever less lively, ever more
material. This had to be so if thought was to come to grips with
lifeless matter and develop to the high point it has reached today.

Though this was the general trend of evolution, there ran along¬
side it a thin thread of another kind of knowledge about nature's
secrets. This took into account forces which the new trend dis¬
regarded, We are speaking of genuine alchemy.

The prevailing concept of alchemy is most inadequate and mis¬
represents the facts. Alchemists are usually considered charlatans,
ignorant people subject to all sorts of superstitions, men with the
one object of turning base metals into gold. There were certainly
some charlatans and dilettantes among them, especially towards
the end of the period referred to, who earned this bad reputation.
But true alchemists such as Basil Valentine, Agrippa of Nettes-
heim, Raymond of Sabunda, and certainly also Paracelsus, re¬
vealed a shining, cosmic knowledge, recognizable as a last spark
of the ancient enlightenment.

Much intensive, penetrating study is required for any real
understanding of what genuine alchemy was. And students must
take into account the fact that writers of alchcmistic works
usually veiled their meaning; readers must often look for the
key to decipher what their words are intended to convey.
Today, that wisdom of not so very long ago, which embraced
cosmos, earth and man, is almost wholly forgotten.

Just as the ancient clairvoyant vision was crystallized in the

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Aristotelian teachings, so for the alchemists the spiritual forces
at work in nature were crystallized in the physical and chemical
phenomena brought to light by their experiments. These experi¬
ments were questions put by them to the goddess Natura, and her
answers were regarded with deep reverence. To be sure, the
alchemists had no specialized knowledge of the chemical structure
of matter such as we have today, but in its place was an awareness
of the matrix of earthly and universal forces from which matter
sprang and in which it was embedded.

There is a widespread supposition that modem chemistry had
its roots in alchemy and has evolved out of the ancient ‘primitive*
ideas entertained by alchemists. This is incorrect. Alchemy was
rather the last fruit of a glorious past. This accounts partly for the
decadence into which it finally fell. Modern chemistry is quite
the opposite: a new departure in the search for knowledge.

CHAPTER THREE

New Ideas on the Primality of Spirit

In order to discover those aspects of truth which have been lost
to modern science, it is by no means necessary to attempt to
recover a long-past wisdom in its old form. That would be im¬
possible without resort to an old-style faith. The spirit of the
times quite properly demands that knowledge take the place of
faith. So the question arises: are there any modem means whereby
the truth contained in myths could be made available to science?
Would it at least be possible to achieve an inner conviction that
reality consists of more than the physical senses can perceive, and
to do so in a way that could satisfy a scientific conscience?

The old clairvoyant faculties had been transformed into intel¬
lectual capacity* Macrocosmic forces that once directed man
from outside had given way to forces awakening in man himself.
But docs the development of the critical intellect mean that the
spiritual evolution of man has come to an end? Or is it rather
the modest start of a new era? Docs it not seem that the seeds of
new human faculties are beginning to germinate?

Although Goethe’s work was done more than a century ago,
it must be said that his insights into life’s deeper laws were wider
than those mostly to be found in present-day science. Materialists
would deny this, but it often takes centuries to understand
genius. Gocthe*s neglected theory of colour points to the emerg¬
ence of the new faculties wc mean, as do some of his other basic
scientific ideas.

As the great opponent of Newton, Goethe attacked Newton’s
purely intellectual explanation of light with an acerbity that was
rare in him, Newton believed that the light- waves he discovered
were light itself, or produced light, and this, together with his
assumption that light was composed of the various colours,
roused Goethe to the most vehement protest. In his view, light¬
waves were simply the physical manifestation of eternal in¬
divisible light, which produced the spectrum in co-operation
with an equally real force of darkness that is something quite
different from the mere absence of light. Just as the human body

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

described by anatomy is only the physical aspect of man’s eternal
being, so, in Goethe’s view, was light a far loftier element than
the sphere in which its waves were manifest. He spoke of light’s
moral qualities, of its ‘deeds and sufferings’ as the origin of colour.

In Goethe, a comprehensive vision was renewed. His observa¬
tions were invariably directed toward the whole of Nature* He
refused to separate the individual phenomenon from its related
background, A dynamic rather than a static thinker he thought
in terms of polarities and metamorphoses. To his study of
Nature’s physiognomy, as one might call it, he brought all his
resources of sympathetic insight, and so Nature revealed to him
more of her secrets than weighing, counting and measuring can
ever discover. If we see a smile on a friend’s face, it would seem
strange to take his blood-pressure and make a urinalysis to
ascertain its cause. The cause is immediately apparent when we
look into his face with sympathetic sensitivity. That is Goethe’s
way with nature - his power of judging by looking’,

Goethe's time harboured more such men than is commonly
realized, thinkers who opposed with all the strength of their
idealism the materialism threatening every branch of science.
And they brought this to expression not only in art and philo¬
sophy, but also in science through the new seeds sown by Goethe
and his followers.

The so-called ‘Enlightenment’ was widely regarded as an
attack on the deepest elements in human nature; and to give
these a voice in all fields of science was felt to be a task for German
culture. So Novalis, in his essay, ‘Christendom or Europe’,
could write the thought-provoking sentence: ‘The product of the
modern way of thinking was called philosophy and included
every tiling opposed to the old. Fantasy and feeling were pro¬
claimed heresies, along with love of art and morality, past and
future. Man was reduced to a mere creature of nature, ruled by
animal necessity. The eternal creative music of the universe
became the monotonous rattling of a giant mill driven by the
stream of chance and floating on it — a mill sufficient unto itself,
without maker or miller, a real perpetuum mobile, with only
itself to grind/

These words describe a school of thought limited to but one

NEW IDEAS ON THE PR1MAL1TY OF SPIRIT

aspect of the world, the mechanical. The Goetheanists tried to
counter it with a living concept whereby they hoped to leam
more of nature than merely its physical-material precipitate.
Their goal was to understand life in man and universe, right
through to the stage of scnsc-perccptiblc phenomena.

Goethe's followers were at pains to carry his method of in¬
vestigation further. One of their number, the philosopher
Preuss, taught that matter and spirit are a unity. According to
him, matter is spirit on another level. His essay, ‘Spirit and
Matter*, points to the experiments of Baron von Herzecle of
Hanover, whose work, The Origin of Inorganic Substances^ seems
to offer proof that matter is continuously created in the living
plant.

In this and later works Herzecle published some five hundred
analyses indicating an increase in the potash, magnesium, phos¬
phorus, calcium and sulphur content of seeds sprouted in dis¬
tilled water only. During the experiments the seeds were placed
in porcelain bowls and covered with glass bells equipped with
air filters to keep out dust. The law of the conservation of matter
would have led one to expect to find exactly the same mineral
content in plants grown in distilled water as was found in the
seeds from which they developed. But Herzeele's analyses indicate
a definite increase not only of mineral ash but of every one of its
components.

Herzecle then carried out a further series of experiments, using
salt solutions of a pre-determined make-up in place of the dis¬
tilled water medium. He found, for example, that seeds grown
in a solution containing phosphorus in a certain density lessened
the solution's phosphorus content. But the seedlings themselves
showed no increase in phosphorus. Instead, their sulphur content
rose materially. This, says Herzeele, seems to indicate that plants
can make sulphur out of phosphorus. He likewise found that
plants growing in a nutrient solution of salts of calcium in¬
creased their phosphorus content. Moreover, their calcium con¬
tent increased when they were grown in a magnesium-salt
solution. To stimulate magnesium production, he found he had
to add carbonic acid. In this particular experiment the seedlings
were grown on wire netting woven of platinum in chambers

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

provided with certain quantities of carbonic acid* The vessels
were kept moistened with distilled water.

Space permits giving only the following examples as illustra¬
tions of his extensive findings.

Magnesium Content with no Introduction of
Carbonic Acid

Before the experiment After

the experiment

0-007%

0*022%

o-oo8%

0*036%

With Carbonic Acid

Before

After

0-012%

0*062%

0-014%

0*110%

Herzeelc believed that his experiments demonstrated the
existence of a chain of genetic relationships from carbon dioxide
via magnesium, calcium and phosphorus to sulphur, thus:

CG2 Mg Ca P -> S

In other experiments he established the formation of potassium
from nitrogen:

N K

Thus it appears not only that plants can transform substances,
but that the creation of basic dements of matter is commonplace
in the organic kingdoms. Herzeelc goes so far as to say that dead
matter is never of primary origin. ‘What lives may die, but
nothing is created dead/ And ‘the soil does not produce plants;
plants produce soil\

Preuss speaks of these experiments as follows: ‘Herzeele's ex¬
periments offer tangible proof that the supposed immutability of
chemical elements is a fiction that must be speedily discarded if
natural science is to progress/

The tragic thing was that Herzeele’s writings, published
between 1876 and 1883, were given the silent treatment and lost
sight of Only one copy seems to have survived. Considering the
fact that this was a time of many great inventions and discoveries,

NEW IDEAS ON THE PRIM ALITY OF SPIRIT

when, for example, Liebig and Wohler were developing theories
that led to atomistic explanations of biological phenomena, it is
perhaps understandable that Herzeele was not given a hearing.

It can be stated, after a decade’s research by the author, that by
and large Herzeele’s findings are scientifically sound and by no
means as fantastic as they first appear. Many of his experiments
were checked and his claims substantiated. An increase in mineral
content was definitely established in many cases. But something
else turned up of which no mention is made in Herzeele’s writ¬
ings: decreases of mineral content in some other cases. His findings
must therefore be extended to the statement that plants not only
generate matter out of a non-material sphere, but under certain
circumstances again etherealize it,

Herzeele ’s research did not answer the question whether new
matter is actually formed, or whether carbonic acid and nitrogen
are simply metabolized into mineral components of the plant.
My own research shows plainly that wc are dealing here with a
fresh creation of substances.

Experiments with seedlings were conducted by the author,
substituting air-tight glass vessels for Herzeele s open saucers.
Later on, sealed ampoules were used to prevent the entrance or
escape of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and other elements. The jars
and ampoules were placed on an analytical scale for observation.

If plants generate matter, it was to be expected that the vessel
with the seedlings in it would grow heavier, for weight is an
attribute of matter. If, on the other hand, matter in plants can
actually be cthc realized, the vessel of seedlings could be expected
to grow lighter.

A detailed account of the experimental set-up and my findings
will be published later. However, a short interim report should
be presented here.

It is probably unnecessary to emphasize that every possible
precaution was taken to obtain scrupulously accurate measure¬
ments. Beginning in 1933, a Kaiser and Sievers scale, model
PbPlI, equipped with projection readings and blower and
capable of determining weights up to 0*0 1 mg., was at my dis¬
posal, Accurate readings were obtained with the help of a com¬
pensation device: by using a weighing vessel of equal volume

3,0

2,0 -■

WEIGHT CHANGES OF SPROUTING
SEEDS IN A CLOSED SYSTEM

Weighing experiments from 26th January
to 22nd February 193 4

1,0-'

I 27 28 29 30 3 I
1934

-1,0 —

'2,0 -■

3,0-'

10 13 14 is 16 17 IB 19 20 21 22

Weight of seeds = 0PS892 gr

Gain in weightdufing the
full-moon period - 0,0032 gr

« 0,54*/* of the weight
of the seed s

Loss in weight during the
new- moon per sod “ 0.0034gr

= 0,587* of the weight
nf ihp s^eds.

Fig. i

-4,0 4

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

WEIGHING EXPERIMENTS -19 3 4

Weight changes of sprouting seeds in a closed system.

Kg' 3

Weight changes of sprouting seeds in a dosed system.

NEW IDEAS ON THE PRIMALITY OF SPIRIT

as a counter-weight* no allowance had to be made for changes
in barometric pressure, temperature or humidity. The weighing
vessels had closely fitting lids, firmly cemented on with Ramsay
fat. Later on, ampoules of 20 c.c. capacity were substituted for the
jars and sealed up after filling.

The margin of error was determined by compensation weigh¬
ing, comparing an empty tared jar of identical volume with the
counter-weight ordinarily employed. It never exceeded ± -ooi mg.
Experiments were limited to a duration of fourteen days, as this
sufficed for undisturbed growth under reasonably normal
conditions.

Measurements now clearly established both increases and de¬
creases in weight, to a degree far exceeding the determined
margin of error.

Increases and decreases in weight - or, to put it another way,
the emergence and disappearance of matter - occurred in rhyth¬
mic sequences which proved the time factor to be the determining
one* Figure 1 shows graphs of two successive experiments, with
time {i,e. individual days, from January 26, 1934 to February 22,
1934} shown on the horizontal, weight changes in milligrams on
the vertical arm. The starting weight is plotted as o.

The first experiment established a gain of 3*2 mg. between
January 26 and February n, a period during which the moon
was waxing. The second experiment, which began on Feb¬
ruary 11 and continued while the moon was waning, showed
a loss of 3*4 mg. Identical or similar results were obtained in
subsequent experiments during the years from 1934 to 1940.
During this time, experiments consistently gave evidence of
weight gains or losses in every waxing and waning moon period
respectively, with the findings confirmed by setting up at least
two, and sometimes as many as four, simultaneous tests.

Figure 2 gives a survey of experiments performed in 1934, It
shows clearly that the moon rhythm is subservient to a stronger
annual, or sun, rhythm. Strangely enough, at the year’s halfway
point in summer, the powerful dynamics of the curves come to
a standstill.

Figure 3 shows annual curves for the seven years from 1934 to
1940, in the form of maximum and minimum curves which

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

result from plotting points of maximum and minimum weight
changes registered during the full-moon and new-moon periods
covered by the experiments. The striking decline in the curves
after the great surges of 1934 cannot be discussed here. But it is
obvious that a still greater rhythm overrides the annual or sun
rhythm just as the latter dominates the rhythm of the moon.

The study of plants involves processes emancipated from the
sphere in which mechanical and chemical laws obtain - processes
subject rather to cosmic laws and influences.

A further series of experiments performed by the author
indicates that even mineral matter reflects planetary influences in
physical and chemical reactions. The broad field pioneered by
the capillary-dynamic method of research shows definite con¬
nections between earthly substances and planetary happenings.
The experimental procedure used consists in letting uncoatcd
filter paper absorb solutions by means of capillary attraction.
Forces active in a given substance arc revealed by this method to
a degree unmatched by physical and chemical analysis.

Admittedly, the results of such researches are not readily ex¬
pressed in terms of measure, weight and number, and a feeling
for quality is essential to a grasp of the phenomena observed.
Our time is unfortunately still inclined to consider real only
what can be weighed, measured and counted. This means still
giving Newton precedence over Goethe.

However, Herzeele’s and my own subsequent researches sub¬
stantiate the statement that the law of the conservation of matter
applies only to the mineral kingdom and within certain limits,
and may not simply be extended to the organic kingdom. We
have no right, therefore, to project present conditions of matter
into past and future infinities of time or space. Rather is there
every reason to assume that matter is the precipitate of life.

Is it not reasonable to suppose that life existed long before
matter and was the product of a pre-existent spiritual cosmos?
Does it not seem high time to counter the dogma of matter’s
pre-existence with the idea of the pre-existence of spirit?

CHAPTER FOUR

The Plants

In the rainbow, Goethe recognized the activity of two polar
opposites, light and darkness, which bring their yellow and
blue to harmonious resolution in the colour green. There is a re¬
conciling element in this many-hued bond between heaven’s light
and earthly darkness.

The same polar principle is found in plants. Their roots are
trapped in the earth’s dark depths, while their blossoms reach
toward the sunlight. In the plant’s green foliage the two pro¬
cesses are harmonized. Indeed, it is here in the leaf that we find
the primal form and essence of the vegetable kingdom.

We know that starch is a product of the plant’s process of
assimilation. This process takes place in the plant’s middle zone,
the leaf, when sunlight acts upon it in the presence of water and
carbon dioxide. Plant physiologists express this in the following
formula :

6CO2+5H2O = C6H10O5 (starch) + 602

This rigid atomistic formula and its corollaries fall far short
of giving an adequate picture of the miraculous creation of
this virgin substance, and they certainly do not explain it.
What account do they take of light and of its interplay with
darkness?

Nature often gives sensitive observers certain insights. An
ocean traveller who has experienced a monsoon (actually a storm
in sunlit weather), and has seen the ship enveloped in foam and
spray and the sunlight striking through it, making the sky a
glorious rainbow dome, can derive some impression from such
a phenomenon of the way living substance comes into being.
The elements that compose this natural drama are light, air and
water. Air-permeated water or water-permeated air, with the
sun’s rays striking through them, make the rainbow. Light, air
and water are the elements that make colours play around
fountains and waterfalls. But one can stare and stare at open
secrets without fathoming their meaning. For again it is the same

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

elements - light, air and water - which bring about assimilation
and go to form starch in plants*

Of course, the airy element in assimilation is 'heavy air\ or
carbon dioxide, rather than the ordinary atmospheric air* Carbon
dioxide is the heaviest gas known to nature ; it can be poured,
exactly like a liquid, from one container into another* The so-
called 'Dog Grotto5 in Naples is simply a subterranean lake of
carbon dioxide which suffocates dogs that enter it* A man can
wade safely through this invisible shallow sea because his head
is on a higher level than its surface*

This ‘heavy air* seems to be one reason why assimilation does
not stop at the colour-drama stage but reaches down into the
material process of creating starch* We might express it thus:
starch is a bewitched rainbow drawn down into matter by the
plant’s vital activity*

Starch is subject to many metamorphoses in the plant organ¬
ism* The most important one is the etherealizing of it into sugar
as the sun’s warmth draws it upward. Sugar is found in the
nectars but is also present higher up, in the still more refined
form of glucosides, in the blossom colours. When our 'en¬
chanted rainbow5 gleams in a field alight with flowers, it is as
though heaven itself were greeting us.

Picturing a plant against the background of the rainbow is not
just poetic licence: it is simple realism. And it touches on the
deepest questions of the origin of matter.

We often spend years mulling over some idea too vague as yet
to find expression. Gradually it takes on contours, becomes clear
and transparent, reaches a stage where it can be spoken or written
down. Now it is ready for others to examine it. Every artist is
familiar with this progression from idea to finished creation.
And those who conic to know the artist's work resurrect his
crystallized thought in their appreciation of it* A culture is
nothing more nor less than the realm of human thought made
visible*

Must we not think of the creations of the great artist, nature,
as works of entirely similar origin? Must not the wealth of forms
about us, built by nature according to laws which we are only
just beginning to investigate, have issued from a cosmic activity

THE PLANTS

akin to thinking? What happens when a higher than human
being thinks, and what effect do such thoughts have?

For those who acknowledge a higher order, questions like
these spring from the heart, and one comes to see nature and the
universe as the gradual thought-creation of the gods, similar in
kind to one's own slowly shaping realizations.

Against the background of such thoughts and feelings the
rainbow stands out as the first phase of divine revelation, as the
sublime, overarching pattern of fundamental laws that govern
all creation - the same laws which, in the realm of life, bring
forth the plant. In ancient times the rainbow was felt to be a
bridge down which the gods descended. The picture may still
serve as a reminder to the inquirer to keep on concerning himself
closely with this phenomenon. If one looks into the deeper
content of the myth, one comes to understand its message: the
creative process travels over the rainbow on its descent into the
material world of nature.

Human thoughts crystallized in works of art are resurrected
in the soul of the appreciative beholder. Cosmic thoughts em¬
bodied in the natural universe come alive again in us when we
approach them with such attitudes of soul.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Carbohydrates

When a plant is destroyed, as by heat for example, the
remainder consists chiefly of carbon and water. Wc need
only take some plant substance, a leaf or a flower, and heat it
in a test tube to see how water condenses on the sides of the
tube and carbon lies on the bottom in a form that still shows the
original structure. Carbon and water, then, compose the plant's
material residues. These are therefore called carbohydrates.

It should be noted that the term applies only to dead matter,
for carbon and water can never be combined to make starch or
any other plant substance. This distinction between living and
dead substance receives too little attention in our time. There is
no question here of reviving an obsolete vitalism to which
Wohler dealt a death-blow - perhaps rightly - when he suc¬
ceeded in synthesizing urea. The nebulous life-force postulated
by vitalism could never satisfy a scientific conscience. On the
other hand, Wohler made the mistake of regarding urea as a
typical product of organic life, instead of seeing that it is a final,
almost inorganic waste-product of life. It will become evident
later on that all the chemical elements known to science at the
present time are more or less in the same category of waste
products - corpses — ot organic life.

STARCH

Starch, which is generated by the process of assimilation in the
plant's green leaves, is found first in a colloidal, fluid state, in
which form it is carried to storage places in the roots and fruit.
It is then called starch-reserve, and is found in characteristic
grains with a stratified structure. This 1$ the only form in which
it can be recovered for industrial purposes. It is obtained by a
washing process in which the heavy starch sinks to the bottom of
the vessel, while the lighter components, such as chaff, husks and
proteins (c,g, wheat germ), arc carried off by a gentle stream of
water. The dried precipitate is used commercially as granular
starch or made into powder for feeding purposes.

THE CARBOHYDRATES

Every plant has its own characteristic starch-grain pattern, for
the form-principle inherent in a plant comes out in every smallest
part of the whole. Going even further, one can say that every
part of the world, every landscape, has its typical vegetation;
both are formed by the interaction of soil and geographical
location with cosmic forces. Looking westward, towards the
Americas, we find a distinct trend towards vegetative gigantism.
One need think only of the great forest-trees of Canada, of
Mexico's giant cacti with the distorted shapes that lend the land¬
scape its grotesque appearance. The potato is a product of this
western world* Its starch comes in the form of giant grains lop-
sidedly stratified around a centre out of true, making them look
like disfigured goblins* Eastward, towards Asia, landscapes arc
more ethereal. Palms open their fronds in a volcanic setting,
where an outward-raying tendency prevails. Rice is at home in
these surroundings. In contrast to the potato, which likes to
dwell in darkness, the panicles of rice lift their fruit lightward
in loose open sprays. The tiny grains of rice-starch are similarly
radiating polygons. They have none of the usual stratification
around a centre, thus betraying a tendency to the formless.

So even small starch kernels reveal one-sidedness, and with it
the dangers of both West and East. The West is threatened with
becoming imprisoned in matter, the East with losing itself in
formlessness* Both as to size and shape, the starch granules of
wheat, rye and barley show a beautiful harmony between the
two polarities. Starches of Central European plants are shaped
like miniature suns, even with concentric layers around their
cores.

When starches are made into a paste and heated, microscopic
examination shows that the granules lose their normal structure.
One ring after another explodes, and the matter is absorbed by
the surrounding liquid. But this does not resemble solutions of,
say, salt or sugar* The starchy fluid is translucent rather than
transparent, of a peculiar consistency, neither fluid nor solid, but
rather that of paste. This pudding-like condition is called colloidal
in chemistry, and the substances that tend to it, colloids. Life-
processes take place almost entirely in the colloidal state. We
shall have more to say on this subject in a later chapter.

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

One characteristic of starch is that it turns blue in contact with
iodine. This phenomenon is accounted for by its essential nature.
We described above the part played by light in creating starch.
Now we must explore the characteristics of iodine that account
for the above-mentioned reaction. It is well-known that iodine
steals light. If a solution of iodine is placed in the path of the
spectrum, all the visible part of the spectrum is absorbed. Only
the invisible infra-red and ultra-violet rays are left. In combina¬
tion with light-engendered starch, iodine behaves as it does with
the spectrum : it extinguishes light.

We can put this iodine reaction to good use in studying the
changes starch undergoes when it is treated with, say, acids.
Acid is a dissolving agent, similar to fire. If hydrochloric acid
touches the skin, actual burns result, A drop of acid burns a hole
through cloth. Acid even dissolves metals. Starch-paste, mixed
with a few drops of acid and then heated, undergoes a peculiar
change: the colloidal, pasty fluid turns into a bright liquid clear
as water. The iodine reaction is no longer blue, but wine-red.
Further heating lightens the colour, which changes to red, then
to orange, and finally to yellow. Chemical analysis shows that
the starch has changed to sugar. This process is applied industrially
on a large scale. When the acid is removed and the solution
purified and evaporated, starch-sugar, glucose, dextrose, grape
sugar and the like are the end-products, available in shops.

SUGAR

The conversion of starch into sugar that takes place in test-
tubes repeats a process which the sun carries out with starch in
living plants. Like the fiery action of the add in the test-tube, the
sun's heat sublimates plant starches built up in foliage by organic
processes and turns them into the sugar stored in blossom nec¬
taries. Sugar, like starch, is a carbohydrate, but a purified one.
The chemical formulae for starch and sugar are almost identical.
But the molecular weight of starch is many times that of sugar.
Starch is denser.

It can be observed that the conversion of starch into sugar by
means of acids goes through several stages. Dextrin is an inter¬
mediate stage, at which starch has not yet become a sugar but no

2 6

THE CARBOHYDRATES

longer reacts to iodine. This substance is produced commercially
by a roasting process. The burning effect of acid is replaced by
heating the starch just enough to bring it to the dextrin stage.
Bread-crust consists of substances similar to dextrin. The same
intermediate states of conversion from starches into sugars
appear in the living plant in vegetable dextrins and mucous
substances.

Like the starch held in reserve in certain organs of the plant,
sugar is stored not only in fruit and blossom, but in the foliage
and roots as well. The question arises whether these various
sugars are qualitatively the same - whether beet sugar, cane
sugar and honey are identical. Or are there certain qualitative
differences, especially from the standpoint of nutrition? Rather
fierce battles have been fought on this score recently by food
reformers and other such groups. We will try to throw some
light on the matter by examining the various forms of sugar
against a historical background.

From the chemical standpoint, there is little or no difference
between beet sugar, cane sugar and honey, or indeed between
grape sugar and fructose. Both beet and cane sugar are b loses
{C12H220ii)> while honey, grape sugar and fructose are mono-
ses (C6H12Ofl). The first group has a molecular weight approxi¬
mately twice that of the second, by chemical standards. Honey

- c —

H.C OH

; = 0

C — 0

-ri¬

c = 0

— c —

H C OH

HjC OH

HjC oh

Aldehyde

Ketone

Grape sugar

Fructose

group

(Aldose)

(K close)

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

is a mixture of grape sugar and fructose. From the standpoint of
chemical structure they differ* for grape sugar is an aldose and
fructose a kctose.

Grape sugar and fructose are distinct also from the standpoint
of physics in that solutions made of them behave differently in
the presence of polarized light* Grape sugar turns the plane of
polarization to the right* fructose to the left, thereby earning the
names dextrose and levulose. Fruit sugar is like honey in being
a mixture of the t wo. Beet and cane sugar cannot be distinguished
by either chemical or physical methods* Only the above-men¬
tioned capillary dynamic method and biological tests succeed in
doing so to some extent, though not conclusively*

Sugar was known long before man sharpened his consciousness
of taste with salt. Honey is mentioned in very ancient documents.
It was antiquity’s only form of sugar* Oriental peoples as well as
early Teutonic tribesmen found honey indispensable to their way
of living as both a nutrient and an appetizer* as the writings of
Plutarch and Aristotle attest,

Alexander's conquests introduced a new factor. He led his
armies through Persia to India and there discovered ‘a reed that
produces honey without the aid of bees'. This was sugar-cane,
already under cultivation at that time in India, It was not long
before sugar-cane had spread to Persia and Egypt, and it soon
became known in all parts of the civilized world. The Arabs
discovered the art ofcrystallizing canc juice* By the eighth century
they had a fairly highly developed sugar industry* The sap was
boiled down and collected* still hot* in palm leaf cylinders. The
finished crystallized cake was history's first sugar loaf.

Charlemagne did much to further spice-trading with the East,
which was also the origin of sugar* The Crusades, too, contri¬
buted to popularizing sugar in European countries* Columbus
introduced sugar-cane to America. That is how Cuba, which
devotes a high percentage of its arable land to growing sugar*
and San Domingo, came to have such extensive plantations.

Nevertheless, sugar remained more of a luxury than a food
throughout the Middle Ages* It was only at the dawn of modem
times that the ‘enlightened despots', Frederick the Great, Maria
Theresa, and Joseph IIT decreed that sugar should be made a food

THB CARBOHYDRATES

and eased its importation by lowering the tariffs and taxes on it.
The sugar industry took a tremendous upswing when European
refineries began making crystallized white sugar out of the
imported brown raw product.

'It was then/ says a contemporary account, 'that further
progress was blocked by an artificial product/ In 1 800 the
German scientist, F. A. Achard, discovered the possibility of
extracting sugar from beets. But twenty years passed before a
commercially profitable type of beet was bred. Even so, despite
all the ingenuity of German technicians and chemists, the industry
would not have developed as it did if politics had not played a
decisive role.

Napoleon had decreed a continental blockade and thereby
stopped all sugar imports. Efforts to produce a beet sugar every
bit as good as canc were naturally redoubled. Napoleon himself
took a personal interest in speeding the development of the beet
sugar industry, with the result that quite a number of factories
producing beet sugar were in existence by 1811. After Napoleon’s
fall, the young industry kept going by virtue of the fact that it
had made far greater technical progress than the cane sugar
industry. Even today it would be hard to find any other branch
of industry where more thought has been spent on working out
every detail of manufacture. It began to appear that beet sugar
had finally driven cane sugar out of the running, both in the old
world and the new.

But again a great war introduced a new factor: the countries
involved in World War I used their sugar to make nitroglycerin
and other explosives. Their populations, hungry for sweets, had
to make do with saccharin, a synthesized by-product of the coal*
tar industry. There will be more to say about saccharin in a later
chapter. Fortunately, people did not continue using this un¬
natural sweetener very widely once the war was over.

On the other hand, the war and the disturbed social and
economic conditions that preceded and followed it restored cane
sugar to a more favourable position. Several factors made for a
reduced planting of sugar beets. One was the need for intensive
cultivation, combined with increasingly unfavourable working
conditions on the farms. Another was the growing exhaustion of

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

the soil due to prolonged monoculture. This favoured insect
depredation and disease. The result was a limiting of sugar beet
production. Beet sugar could not keep on competing with the
cheaper cane product. Indeed, during the decades after World
War I, it continued in production only by grace of government
support.

The following table gives a graphic picture of these tendencies
in world sugar production:

Comparative Percentages of Total World Beet and
Cane Sugar Production

(from Ullinann’s Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology)

IpOO

1906

1913

1918

1920

Beet sugar

65%

50%

47%

29%

22%

Cane sugar

35%

50%

53%

7^%

78%

To return to the question of qualitative differences between the
various kinds of sugar, it might be well to consider the facts
condensed in the following sketch, bearing in mind that there
has been a gradual descent from honey, via cane, to beet sugar -
in ocher words, from blossom, to stalk, to root.

Blossom

Honey

Time of the Patriarchs

Stalk

Cane sugar

(Alexander, Charlemagne,
[Frederick the Great

Root

Beet sugar

Napoleon

Coal-tar

Saccharin

Industrialism

Flower, stem and root are the three parts of the plant, dearly
differentiated as to form, substance and function. They belong
together as three parts of an organism, but each is the carrier of
a distinct, essential tendency. For the blossom links the plant
with the surrounding macrocosm, the root with the earth, while
the stalk {or leaf) is the place where earth and heaven meet in
harmonious interaction.

Honey is the immediate product of the cosmic whole. Similarly,
life in the time of the patriarchs was permeated and guided from

THE CARBOHYDRATES

on high by impulses which laid direct hold on the will-life of
humanity.

The period of cane sugar’s dominance was that of the con¬
solidation of Middle Europe, with its founding of cities and of
social orders. It was a time when the heart was especially engaged.

Like the beet, rooted and thoroughly at home in earth, thought
is firmly bound to matter in the age of materialism. The world’s
affairs are guided today by intellects with the hard, down-to-
earth, tough quality of rootlike thinking, as yet scarcely touched
by the dawn of a new age.

While the extraction of honey requires no technology and the
production of cane sugar at first involved only natural tools and
objects, such as the moulds made of palm-leaf cylinders, the beet
sugar manufacturing process comes from a very highly developed
mechanical inventiveness.

A survey of the changing levels of consciousness in human
evolution shows how they are reflected in changes in man’s
nutritional habits. These are again mirrored in the changing use
he makes of environmental resources. Sugar is only one of many
possible examples.

The history of sugar comes into fresh illumination against this
background. Honey, cane sugar, beet sugar, the three repre¬
sentatives of the threefold organism of the plant, take turns as
man’s companions on his journey through time.

But the pattern of the threefold plant belongs as much to man’s
organism as it docs to his history. Morphological and physio¬
logical consideration of the human body show that the same
formative forces are at work in the nerve-sense organization of
the head as in the plant’s root-system. Forces similar to those
active in the blossom principle are found in man’s will and his
metabolism. And the forces that build stalk and foliage work in
human feeling, and in the rhythmic system centrally located
between head and limbs.

If such connections really exist, then it can be assumed that
root substances taken as foods act upon the brain and nervous
system; that products of the flowering and fruiting parts of
plants affect the metabolism; and that leafy matter stimulates
breathing and circulation.

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

This gives points of view for considering the metamorphoses
of sugar as a substance, and hence its effects on the human and
social organism in the course of history.

In this connection it can be interesting to observe the use of
sugar by the various nationalities. It is certainly noteworthy that
the intellectual West has a sugar consumption many times that
of the still patriarchal East.

Sugar Consumption in Kg. per Person
(from Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology)

1903

1914

England

46-4

40-8

America

32-0

33-6

Switzerland

20-7

34-0

France

20-1

177

Germany

19-5

34-1

Holland

17-2

Austria

10-6

17*0

Russia

6-7

I3‘3

It should be obvious that wc arc not here favouring one kind
of sugar over another. Our purpose is to give a clear characteriza¬
tion of the various types. Then every reader will know what
environmental forces he is dealing with in the sugar he chooses
and will be able to make a choice suited to his own individual
needs. This approach docs away with fanaticism in nutritional
matters; for fanaticism flourishes only where a limited horizon
shuts out perspective.

CELLULOSE

Wc showed above how cosmic lcvitational forces, dominant
in the upper parts of plants, work upon the starch of the middle
zone and ethcrealize it into sugar. The densifying earth forces of
the opposite polarity harden starchy matter into the cellulose,
the wood of roots. Cellulose is chemically very similar to starch,
for it is also a carbohydrate, though in hardened form.

Sugar is of course present in all parts of plants, not just in the
blossom. Cellulose, too, permeates the whole organism. Though

THE CARBOHYDRATES

the root contains a far greater proportion, the body of the plant,
from root through leaf to blossom, is built of a fine network of
cellulose. It comes into the picture as a structural element when
plants go beyond the stage of being simply life-processes and
begin to take on lasting form and substance. Cellulose is root-
related, and the centre of its activity is in the root. Sugar, on the
other hand, is the carrier of conversion processes in the plant.
It is therefore part of an upward-moving, refining evolution of
plant matter from the starchy state into the etherealization of
fragrance, colour and pollen.

We described above how starches stored in the plant as a
reserve possess definite form-elements, which are no longer
present when the starch is ctherealized into sugar. The trans¬
formation of starch into cellulose cannot be observed morpho¬
logically, but we see its results in the emergence of hard fibrous
forms typical of cellulose structure.

Cellulose is so hard that it resists dissolution by biological or
chemical means which break down the rest of the plant. It is
then mechanically chopped, hammered and combed to remove
the waste, and the cellulose comes out as textile fibres. For all
their hard, stiff minerality, these still reveal something of the
nature of the light-rays which assimilation processes absorbed
into the plant; it is as though light had become physically per¬
ceptible in them. Bundles of shining jute or flax actually look
like physical embodiments of the sun’s rays.

The purest cellulose, free from any organic admixture, is to be
found in seed hairs. That is why the cotton plant is the most
productive source of cellulose.

But there is still a way of converting this hard substance to a
starch, or even to a sugar. Cellulose shows no iodine reaction,
having become so hard and dense an embodiment of light. But
if one drops concentrated sulphuric acid on a bunch of cotton,
its single fibres dissolve into a formless pulp, and this will show
for some time a positive iodine reaction by turning blue. The
fire-nature of the acid has ctherealized the cellulose to starch.
After a while, however, the iodine reaction turns violet, wine-
red, orange, and finally disappears.

During World War I, industrial use began to be made of this

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

process whereby wood can be changed to sugar. Since the product
proved capable of fermentation, it was carried a step further and
converted into alcohol.

The process for converting cellulose into paste is similar. It is
used in manufacturing vellum. Paper is simply a felt made of
cellulose fibres. We see them clearly in blotting and filter papers.
Making writing-paper requires a coating of glue or some other
filler such as satin-white or barite. If water-repellent, parchment-
type paper is desired, sulphuric acid must be used to reduce the
cellulose to a more paste-like consistency. The felt thereby loses
its original fibre-structure and becomes a homogeneous, im¬
permeable, translucent mass.

CHAPTER SIX

Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen

Starch, sugar and cellulose are carbohydrates, the most charac¬
teristic plant material. All three substances break down into
carbon and water when subjected to heat. Now we know that
water can be further broken down into hydrogen and oxygen by
applying great heat or an electric current. The elements which
compose these three substances are therefore carbon, hydrogen
and oxygen. This is not, however, a very accurate statement,
since carbohydrates, not to mention plants, cannot be built up
out of combinations of these ‘elements’, as the term implies.
We have to bear in mind that elements arc actually break-down
products, or ‘corpses’ - a description that fits them better in this
connection than the term elements.

Nevertheless there are traces of their erstwhile life in these
substances and in their chemical and physical behaviour. The
following characterizations may perhaps serve to indicate their
place in a larger picture.

CARBON

The scaffold-like structure of carbon comes to light whenever
organic substance is carbonized. The surface of a piece of charcoal
still shows clearly the wood’s fibrous composition and other
characteristics. Carbon is indeed the form-giving element
throughout organic nature. All organic matter leaves a carbon-
skeleton behind on its dissolution.

Chemistry has brought the nature of carbon to light in a most
remarkable way. Every schoolboy learns that the whole of
organic chemistry is built around carbon. Structural chemistry
explains this by saying that carbon has the property of being able
to combine with itself. Every atom has tentacles. Thus, for
example, oxygen has two so-called valencies, or tentacles, which
can link up with hydrogen but not with oxygen. So the formula
for water is:

H— O— H (H20)
35

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Now carbon has four valencies, A carbon atom in combination
with four hydrogen atoms forms a molecule of methyl hydride
(methane), thus:

H — C — H (CH4)

Carbon has, moreover, the unusual property of being able to
combine not only with hydrogen and other atoms but also with
itself:

H H H

I I !

H— C— C— C— H (C3H8 - Propane)

i I !

H H H

This makes possible a tremendous number of permutations
and combinations of molecular structure. Four examples of
well-known substances will suffice to show how this unique
property of carbon makes for the formation of chains, rings, and
all sorts of other ramifications of molecular structure:

Carbon frameworks of

c/(f'xc

C J

?<T>?

1 11 II t

N/0

i ll El f

C\C/KC/C\C^C

Grape sugar

Camphor

Benzene

Anthracene

We see that carbon does actually form the framework of all
these compounds. And the term ‘carbon skeleton’ is a familiar
one in structural chemistry.

It is interesting to compare the number of possible carbon
compounds with the number of inorganic compounds that can

CARBON* HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN

be made out of the other seventy-two or more elements. Carbon,
which combines only with hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen in
addition to combining with itself, is a component of several
million known compounds, while the whole realm of inorganic
chemical elements - the mineral world - accounts for only a few
tens of thousands. This astonishing fact is traceable to the tre¬
mendous capacity carbon has for organizing and structuring
matter. Whatever conviction one may hold on the score of
atoms and structural chemistry, this formative capacity of carbon
is the basic reality.

It was no less a man than Kekule, the founder of structural
chemistry, who pointed out with much-needed clarity the
dividing line between hypothesis and fact in chemical formulae.
He showed that the relative weights of compounds (Avogadro)
are based on fact and that the letters used in a formula are its
simplest expression. ‘But if we ascribe any other meaning to the
letters of the formula and regard them as the expression of atoms
or of atomic weights, as often happens, the question arises: how
big or how heavy arc atoms? Since atoms can be neither measured
nor weighed, it is clear that hypotheses about their weight are
pure speculation.3

We are in full accord with Kekule in regarding chemical
formulae as pictures of rhythmical processes and forces, and,
most especially, in looking on formulae relating to the chemistry
of carbon compounds as pictures of the formative forces of this
substance.

Carbon has a particularly remarkable relationship to iron, a
metal possessing centripetal forces which connect it very strongly
with the earth. This will become clearer in a later chapter (Chapter
Twenty-nine). Since carbon gives physical form to all living
matter, it is hardly surprising to find it related to iron.

It is a familiar fact that molten iron can absorb large quantities
of carbon, as tea does sugar. But even small amounts of carbon
change the nature of iron, making soft malleable iron into brittle
cast-iron or tensile steel, depending on the amount of carbon and
the cooling method used. It is noteworthy that here again carbon
functions as a hardening and form-determining agent.

On the other hand, iron changes carbon into diamonds under

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE
certain conditions. If carbon is dissolved in white-hot iron and the
solution subjected to sudden cooling, the carbon is precipitated
in the form of tiny diamonds. Diamonds arc pure carbon, the
hardest as well as the most shining of earth’s substances.

Carbon, the shaper, is strangely enough present also in air as
carbon dioxide. It is air’s heaviest component. This causes it to
seek out low places. As we have seen in the case of the Dog’s
Grotto, it sometimes covers the surface of the ground like a lake.

Plants absorb carbon-dioxide and use the carbon to build up
form. For carbon is always the element which brings fixed form
into living processes. For this reason it could truly be called earth-
substance instead of carbon.

HYDROGEN

Hydrogen, in contrast to carbon, is the earth’s lightest sub¬
stance, hence given to seeking out air’s highest levels. The lower
levels of the atmosphere contain almost no hydrogen, usually
only 0*2%. Investigations of the stratosphere indicate that
hydrogen increases with increasing height. At ioo miles (approxi¬
mately 150 kilometres) hydrogen is said to measure 99' 5%.
This tendency of hydrogen to rise has been put to use in balloons
and zeppclins.

Hydrogen’s chemical properties reveal the same tendency. In
combination with hydrogen even heavy substances such as lead
change into gases. The following examples serve as illustration:

Marsh gas (methane), a hydrocarbon CH4

Will o’ the wisp, phosphene PH3

Rotten egg odour, sulphide of hydrogen SH2

Hydrogen is also connected with warmth in ways that merit
attention. It has the hottest of all Barnes. Iron and steel are welded
with an oxyhydrogen torch that uses a mixture of hydrogen and
oxygen, and hydrogen is the source of heat in all other autogenic
welding processes. Hydrogenous processes are invariably accom¬
panied by heat formation.

Zinc dissolved in hydrochloric acid gives off bubbles of
hydrogen. The chemical formula is:

Zn+ 2HCI -+> ZnCl2 + H2
38

CARBON, HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN

But if wc substitute sulphuric for hydrochloric acid* the same
thing happens; zinc disappears and hydrogen bubbles rise* The
formula here is:

Zn+ H2S04 ZnS04 + hl2

Any acid can be substituted for hydrochloric acid, with the same
effect as far as hydrogen’s part in the reaction is concerned. For
hydrogen is the clement common to all acids; active hydrogen,
that is, known to chemistry as ionic hydrogen, which gives acids
their essential character. The above formulae might suggest that
there is a primary affinity between zinc and chlorine, or between
zinc and the remnant of sulphuric acid, with the release of
hydrogen only a secondary phenomenon. The findings of the
ionic theory contradict this view*

After what wc have seen of the qualities of hydrogen, we can
say that it is hydrogen, with its tendency to rise and to liberate
warmth, that is responsible for the dissolution of metals.

Now the question arises whether this tendency is to be regarded
as a purely physical phenomenon of anti-gravity, or as the last
visible remnant of a cosmic fire-force that pervades the universe
as a dissolving, do-materializing element?

We have already described the role warmth plays in the
process whereby plant substance is etherealized from the middle
zone upward; the process whereby starch changes into sugar
and sugar into still subtler substances, as can be observed when
summer’s heat causes the plant to pour itself out into the universe
as fragrance, colour, pollen-dust.

The materializing force of spring conjures into visibility all
the wealth of greenery and foliage that marks its climax. Then
summer takes over, and with its sublimating warmth brings
forth the ethereal marvel of the blossom. Flowers are that portion
of the plant where substance is refined and emanated. Scent and
pollen rise sunward and stream out into endless reaches of the
universe. In Goethe’s sense, the plant has a real, enduring being.
With its material decay, its essence or ‘idea’ returns to the cosmos,
leaving the tiny, largely mineral seed as an anchor, a guarantee
that it will reappear on earth when conditions warrant. Investiga¬
tions of the stratosphere are credited with discovering clouds of

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE
pollen, still mounting skyward, many miles above the earth.

If this is true, must not hydrogen be somehow intimately in¬
volved? It has been found that hydrogen processes predominate
increasingly as the time for blossoming approaches. The plant-
matter that has become so light and airy now ascends into the
heights as it were on wings of hydrogen. This will be more fully
described in later chapters.

Hydrogen means, literally, water substance. But the word has
a false ring to it. Where did it come from? Lavoisier, in 1783,
produced a gas from water and gave it the name hydrogen
because of this. Cavendish and Watt discovered that burning
hydrogen gives off water, a fact that fixed the name in use. A
more penetrating study of this element yields very slight evidence
of a relationship to water. Water actually contains only a small
amount of hydrogen: 11%. But even in this dilution hydrogen
imparts something of its buoyancy and warm, releasing character
to water, making the latter a dissolving agent for salt, sugar, and
other substances.

If hydrogen were to be baptized with a name indicative of its
inner nature, we would have to call it "pyrogen" (fire-substance).

The physiological processes accompanying the spiritual fire
called enthusiasm are also hydrogen-based. A fire-forcc works
in our enthusiasm which, radiating from the heart, warms our
entire being. It actually makes us feel as though our blood were
lighter. The genius of language teaches us to say that we are
‘fired', ‘hot-blooded*, and the like. Enthusiasm lifts us above our
difficulties, our everyday worries, and on occasion above some
of our material limitations. The heart is the centre of this process,
which has power to overcome even physiological problems.
How clear the medical logic in the use of hydrogcn-rich oils
and seeds becomes, when one considers the strength of the fire-
process in them! Despite differences in application, they have a
common capacity to Tire* the bodily functions and thus to
heighten the mastery of soul over body.

OXYGEN

When one is asked where oxygen is found, one tends to
answer, ‘in the air*. The longing for oxygen is in our blood, and

CARBON, HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN

we think we derive it from the air in breathing. But oxygen
constitutes only 20% of the atmosphere. We shall show later
that the remaining 80% is at least as important. Our longing for
oxygen is really a longing for life, which oxygen supports. But
is this carrier of life to be found only in the air, where it is present
in such small amounts? When we look at the great expanses of
water on our planet, at the lakes and oceans, streams and rivers,
we are looking at a gigantic oxygen reservoir, for water is 89%
oxygen. This is the source of life for the whole earth’s vegetation.
The fructifying rain, the life-giving rivers, owe their enlivening
properties to oxygen. Without water there could be no life on
earth. Plants, which consist principally of water, might even be
called organized water, hence organized life, Man and animal
share as well in the universal life of which water - or the oxygen
active in it - is the carrier.

But what is the nature of this life?

What we mean here is simply and solely the vital process in¬
volved in plant growth. Oxygen is its carrier. A new-born baby
becomes a citizen of earth with his first independent breath of
oxygen. Oxygen * enlivens’ every earthly organism. It is the
expression of that life-force which presses into material embodi¬
ment when, in burgeoning spring, the sap rises and all manner
of leaves, grasses and weeds burst forth.

Oxygen is in this sense the antithesis of hydrogen, which we
came to recognize as the bearer of the "being’ or "idea’ of plants,
as the element which carries them out into the cosmos on its
wings. Oxygen brings about just the opposite occurrence.
Borrowing Goethe’s terms, we might describe oxygen as the
bearer of forces whereby ‘being’ becomes ‘appearance’. When
nature stirs again in spring, the idea of the plant begins incarnat¬
ing, reaching a peak of embodiment at midsummer when it
blossoms and sets its fruit. It has then spent itself as to appearance.
As it fades away and withers, leaving nothing but seeds, the
being of the plant withdraws again from manifestation. In the
following growing season it uses the seed as an anchor-hold for
a further reappearance.

This marvellous rhythm of being and appearance, of blossom¬
ing and germinating, of expanding and contracting, is the primal

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

phenomenon described in Goethe's doctrine of metamorphosis.
Though he did not state it specifically, the metamorphoses to
which he called attention in the expanding and contracting
rhythm governing leaf formation arc smaller cycles of the cosmic
rhythm holding sway in the alternation of being and appearance.

This rhythm, which uses the activity of fire-force (hydrogen)
and oxygen as tools, also comes to light in certain phenomena
involving dyes and leuco compounds. Dyestuffs can be made to
disappear in the test-tube with the aid of hydrogen (hydrochloric
stannous chloride solution -> nascent hydrogen). The solution
becomes colourless. What has happened? Two possibilities exist
Either the colour was destroyed, as occurs when chlorine is used
for bleaching, or the dye-colour was raised to a plane where it
became invisible. But if it is true that hydrogen caused spiritual¬
ization to take place, then it should be possible to conjure the
colour back into appearance with oxygen reactions, such as can
be induced with hydrogen peroxide. And a drop of the latter
actually brings this off. Dye chemists speak here of a lcuco com¬
pound which is colourless and yet can be made from dyestuffs
with the aid of a reducing agent. Oxidation makes the colour
reappear in the compound. Technical use is made of this process
in vat-dyeing. It is impossible, for example, to dye directly with
indigo, because of its insolubility. An indigo vat is therefore
first set up and the indigo made into a colourless solution by
reducing agents. The cloth to be dyed is then soaked in this
colourless indigo solution and hung up in a draughty place.
Oxygen causes the originally colourless material gradually to
turn blue.

It is in character for oxygen, as the carrier of life, to bring
movement (i.e. chemical activity) into even the mineral kingdom.
It combines with almost all substances and makes them capable
of chemical reaction. Silicon, calcium and other elements become
chemically active only when they have combined with oxygen,
which enables them to become silicates, lime, and so on.

What is the origin of the German name for oxygen - Sauerstojfc
‘sour substance*? It was found that certain substances with
an alkaline reaction take on an acid character under intensive
oxidation. Manganese oxide, for example, is a metallic base,

CARBON, HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN
and so combines with sulphuric acid to form manganese sulphate :

MnO + H2SG4 - MnS04 + H2Q

However, manganese heptoxide is an acid {or, strictly speaking,
an acid-forming agent)* It therefore combines with alkalis such
as caustic potash to form permanganate of potash:

Mji207 + zKOH = K2Mn2Qa + H20

Apart from the fact that this phenomenon is limited in practice
to metals of the iron group, some of the strongest acids, such as
hydrochloric, contain no oxygen. Considering how superficial
and limited oxygen's acid-forming capacity is, it is surprising
that it was given a name so uncharacteristic as ‘sour stuff h But
what would be the fitting term? Since it accounts for almost
90% of water and is so active in and through this clement, the
name water-stuff (applied to hydrogen in German) would be
more appropriate. However, as this would cause confusion
we will settle for ‘biogciT (life-substance), an acceptable desig¬
nation considering that here on earth life and water are so
inseparable*

The rhythmical interaction between ‘pyrogen’ (hydrogen) and
‘biogen (oxygen), being and appearance, expansion and con¬
traction, seems stabilized at every stage in carbohydrates by the
earth-substance, carbon. If carbon were to function unrestrictedly,
the rhythm would cease and the carbohydrates take on a rigidity
such as wc have noted in cellulose, the plant’s woody com¬
ponent. If no bounds were set to pyrogen (hydrogen) the carbo¬
hydrates would become formless, as they do in sugar, colour,
scent and pollen, and would be cthercalizcd away into the
cosmos*

When we describe carbohydrates as the product of interacting
carbon, pyrogen and biogen, we are not speaking of an atomistic
combination of these three substances, but rather of an inter¬
weaving of cosmic qualities which produce a unified substance,
starch, in its various metamorphoses. It is only when this organic
unit is destroyed that the three substances fall away like ‘corpses’
from the living organism. In speaking as we do above of carbon,

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

oxygen and hydrogen, we are referring, therefore, to the spiritual
archetypes of these substances: to cosmic formative forces, cosmic
life forces, cosmic fire forces* It is certainly possible to conceive
of earthly substances as material forms of cosmic realities and to
sec in them "incarnated ideas*, like the idea of the archetypal
plant incarnated in the many forms of earthly vegetation*

A dynamic-chemical symbol of carbohydrates might then
conceivably look thus:

Cosmic fire

Life oscillates between form and fire, rigidity and dissolution.
When life moves to the etherealizing pole, then water, the ‘sol¬
vent of life’ (H20), is its expression. When it becomes tied at the
opposite pole to carbon, ‘earth substance*, the carbonic acid
(C02) produced thereby may be termed ‘paralysed life*. Chemical
formulae take on a new reality when they are extended in this
way*

From this standpoint, it would be appropriate to call carbo¬
hydrates ‘formed and fire-quickened cosmic life*.

It can certainly be assumed that the three cosmic qualities
which interact to form carbohydrate vary in intensity in its three
metamorphoses, starch, sugar, and cellulose. This is by no means
a new conception; it is suggested by the allotropic modifications
of a great variety of inorganic substances. Yellow phosphorus,
for example, is active, burns on exposure to air, is extremely
poisonous and a source of light. Red phosphorus is inactive,
lion-poisonous and so to speak dead* What can be seen here in an
inorganic substance could surely obtain to an even higher degree
in the fluctuating interaction of entities not yet materialized.
Starch may therefore be termed a carbohydrate in which life
predominates, sugar a carbohydrate in which pyrogen has the

CARBON, HYDROGEN AND OXYGEN

upper hand, cellulose a product of cosmic shaping forces. These
three metamorphoses may be symbolized as follows:

Cellulose Starch Sugar

Modem chemistry sees cellulose as a product of the prolifera¬
tion of starch molecules through polymerization. This is again
an expression of the primary reality of cosmic shaping forces
working in material condensations.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Scents (Etheric Oils) and Resins

The sugar produced from starch when hydrogen acts upon
it has a tendency to go further in the same direction, to¬
wards etherealization. If sugar solutions such as grape juice are
allowed to stand, they ferment, and the sugar separates into car¬
bonic acid and alcohol. A penetrating study of these fermentation
products would say that on the one hand biogen (oxygen) is
tied to carbon as carbonic acid, while the hydrogen is greatly
reinforced by the alcohol. This alcohol is a strange substance. It
is very volatile, aromatic and inflammable - all indicative of the
predominance of cosmic fire. Some peoples call alcohol ‘fire¬
water’, with -good reason. It is also a familiar fact that alcoholic
fermentation gives rise to all sorts of aromatic compounds known
to the connoisseur of wines as their ‘bouquet’ (in German,
‘flower’).

The emergence of this bouquet in wine-casks stored in sub¬
terranean vaults is a caricature of the wonderful process that
occurs in every blossom growing between earth and sky. Flower
scents, known to chemists as etheric or ethereal oils, all contain a
great deal of pyrogen (hydrogen). They arc therefore obviously
similar in nature to this substance. This is shown in their great
volatility; they fly away, as it were on wings of pyrogen. More¬
over, they are highly inflammable, as everyone knows who has
made the pleasurable experiment of squirting the etheric oils of
orange peel or Christmas tree twigs into a candle flame and has
stood amazed at the splendid fireworks that result.

It is also a familiar experience to find these aromatic substances
becoming the more fragrant the more they follow the law of their
own being: etherealization. Concentrated oil of roses, lavender
or fir smells quite unpleasant; it takes a certain amount of thinning
for the scent to emerge. The perfumer’s art lies in knowing just
where to stop the thinning process.

How are these oils extracted? There are two methods: steam
distilling and enfleurage. Bulgarian attar of roses is extracted by
steam distillation. Rose petals are mashed to a pulp in water and

SCENTS (ETHERIC OILS) AND RESINS

then brought to a boil in stills. The rising steam carries off the
fragrance of the petals. In cooling, the rose oil collects on the
surface of the water condensed from the steam and is drawn off.
This is the method used in extracting oils of rosemary, lavender
and evergreens. These ethcric oils have only a few external
qualities in common with the fatty oils we shall discuss later:
they float on water, cause transitory grease-spots to appear on
paper, and the like.

More delicate scents such as lilac, jasmine and verbena are
extracted by a more complex process. Sheets of glass are smeared
with butter, which has been allowed to stand so long - sometimes
for a century or more - that it has come to look like glycerine or
jelly. The blossoms are laid on these buttered surfaces, which
take up the scent. Butter prepared in this way greedily absorbs
the ctheric oils. The scent-saturated butter is then distilled, the
perfume being extracted by double distillation, while the butter
is used again in further manufacturing. This process is called
enfleurage. The aged butter is a greatly valued asset of perfume
factories, almost worth its weight in gold.

Now there is an obstacle to the plant’s etherealization, to its
streaming out into the cosmos. This is the forming of resins, a
condensation process which is the polar opposite of sublimation.
Biogcn (oxygen) is its carrier. A comparative study of the
chemistry of resins and ctheric oils shows that though the two
groups are very similar, resins contain considerable oxygen.

CH«

CioHie = HcC C\h — C — Clh CM

C»

Pine needle oil (main component: pincnc)

C?o Hjo 0*

Pine resin
(pi marie acid)

Anyone who has stored ethcric oils will have found that as
time goes on the bottle-stopper gets stickier and stickier and a
resinous crust finally forms, while the resin odour grows more
pungent. The process can be greatly accelerated by exposing

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

these oils to the air. We see here how oxygen makes the rising
stream of scent precipitate as resin.

The milky juice of certain other plants, such as dandelion,
spurge and rubber, belongs to this same group of resins.

Evergreen resins are extracted by cutting the bark and catching
the sap in cups* Resin thus extracted and purified is known
commercially as turpentine* So-called Venetian Turpentine is a
product of larch resin*

More valuable products are obtained through distillation. The
first, volatile components to be separated out when turpentine is
heated are spirits of turpentine, a substance closely related to
etheric oils* The next in line is oil of turpentine. The sediment is
coloplionium. Other resins also yield 'spirits', oil and sediment.
Even fossil-resins such as amber yield the medically prized spirits
of amber and oil of amber.

This way of looking at resin-formation can lead one to feel
that the plant sacrifices something when it lets some of its sub¬
stance stay behind on earth. The part this sacrifice plays in seed
formation will be discussed later* Perhaps this is one reason why
antiquity, having some inkling of these matters, valued and used
resins in sacrificial rites* When incense (made from the resin of
BosweUia carteri) burned on the alter, the priests of those days
may well have felt the harmony between heaven and earth in
the ascending smoke of the sacrifice thus :

Biogen has rained fragrance down as resin* Now cosmic fire
resurrects the resin as a fragrance.

CHAPTER. EIGHT

The Fatty Oils

It is a striking fact that oils arc almost entirely restricted to one
plant organ, the seed. In our latitudes, crops such as rape,
hemp, flax, poppy and sunflower ate grown for the oil-content
of their seeds. Overseas, and in more southerly climes, olives,
cotton and peanuts are among the plants grown for their oil
content, found in fruit and seed.

We may ask where this oil comes from. Its lineage is scarcely
traceable to starch or sugar, at least not from the chemist’s stand¬
point. But we note that oil is formed in ripening seed - at a time
when the visible plant has passed its zenith and is pouring its
substance out in scent and pollen, and when the seeds are then
bathed in summer warmth. One may then be inclined to think
that w'hat is seen here may be a further example of the plant’s
many cycles of expansion and contraction - in this case a rhythm
of condensation whereby the material seed is prepared for over¬
wintering.

We described above how scent uses wings of pyrogen (hydro¬
gen) to carry the plant being out into universal space, and how,
in the following spring, this being seeks out the anchoring seed
to re-manifest. This phenomenon takes place within the frame¬
work of the law of metamorphosis. The polar rhythm, expansion
and contraction, being and appearance is its pattern. But what
for the plant being is expansion and contraction is just the opposite
on the plane of physical appearance. Expansion, for the spirit, is
material contraction, and vice versa. Thus, when the plant
expands into the cosmos, its physical manifestation shrinks into
the compass of the seed. The oil that forms in seeds under the
influence of summer’s heat is an inverse reflection of the plant’s
outstreaming. Cosmic fire in the sun’s warm rays is condensed
into oil, as it were concentrating forces of physical expansion in
readiness for next spring’s germination.

Chemical analysis of oil brings to light the huge proportion of
pyrogen (hydrogen) present in it. This can be read in the following
formulae :

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Olive oil's chief component* trioline: C3H5(0-CiaH330}3

Rape seed oil’s chief component* trierucine: C3H5(0.C12H410)3

But it is also a fact that oil can be split into two components
when broken down by alkalis, for example. One of the com¬
ponents that emerges is a fatty acid; the other* alcohol-like
glycerine. Arc these breakdown products possibly also the result
of a cosmic-biological process?

We have previously described how fermented sugar produces
alcohol and carbonic acid* thus dividing and tending in two
directions: toward a concentration of pyrogen on one hand* of
biogen on the other. If something similar occurs in the blossom
with the formation of etheric oils, which arc breathed out and
disappear, then we should expect to find somewhere else in the
plant a complementary acid rich in oxygen. And we do find it
in the swelling seed-bud. We might perhaps put it this way: the
plant acids in the developing seeds are like a vessel in which the
scent flowing back from the periphery of the cosmos is gathered
up. The fire-force in this essence warms and permeates the
developing seed-organisms. Oil is the product of this interaction.
In this sense we might call oil "the perfect plant substance'. We
began with starch, "the virgin substance*, and progressed by way
of sugar and fragrance to the final cosmic-biological synthesis in
the perfected substance, oik

The ancients must have known instinctively about this process,
for they used oil to anoint the kings and priests who in their
dignity were to represent perfection, the highest unity.

Cold-pressed oils from seeds and fruits yield a wonderfully
dear, almost transparent oily fluid. This makes ideal edible oil,
known to technology as "virgin oil*. Second and third pressings,
aimed at extracting every drop, are made at constantly increasing
temperatures. Their yields range in colour from yellow to
brown. They too are used as food-oils* after being refined and
bleached. The cakes left after the last drop is extracted are treated
with fat-solvents such as benzine or carbon tetrachloride and
made to yield still another oil, used in manufacturing.

In addition to edible oils* made chiefly from olives, rape-seed
or peanuts, there are oils that have a tendency to form resin on

THE FATTY OILS

exposure to the atmosphere- As we saw above, etheric oils, too,
have this tendency owing to the effect of atmospheric oxygen*
We showed how plants prepare to form fatty oils by first pouring
out etheric oils in their wafting fragrances. Resin formation
might be looked upon as a remnant of oil's childhood- Resinous
oils arc called drying oils because of their tendency to form dry,
resinous surfaces on contact with the air- This makes them
suitable for use in paint. Flax, poppy and sunflower are the main
sources*

The firorclatedncss of oil was put to practical use in the oil-
fuels of former times* Rape-seed oil was the principal source.

More will be said later on the subject of animal oils and fats
such as butter, tallow, lard and whale-oil. These arc similar to
plant oils, but harder* Man's ever growing need for these denser
oils and fats has developed processes whereby the normal con¬
sistency of oils is artificially changed to that of lard or butter.
The raw materials used in this fat-hardening process are the
plant oils or whale-oil, and its product is margarine.

When animal fats arc broken down or split, they yield, in
addition to glycerine, a fatty acid quite similar to that derived
from vegetable oils, except that it is harder and will even crystal¬
lize* Stearine, obtained from beef tallow, is an example.

The alkaline salts of these fatty acids are soaps. Potash soaps
have a salve-like consistency and are known as soft soaps, while
sodium soaps are harder and can therefore be made into cakes.

Oils and fats boiled up with an alkali form a soapy mass con¬
taining glycerine as u7ell as pure soap* This crude soap is called
glycerine soap for that reason. Curd soap can be separated out
of this solution by adding salt* Common salt is used here for its
coagulating effect* It separates solids from liquids in colloidal
solutions, of which soap is one* When the solid soap has been
removed, the glycerine is extracted by distillation from the lye*

All soaps can be decomposed by any acid stronger than fatty
acids, such as hydrochloric, sulphuric, or even acetic acid, for
example. When a soap solution is decomposed with acid, the oily
or fatty acid separated off rises to the surface of the fluid. Depend¬
ing on whether the raw material used in the soap was a vegetable
oil or an animal fat, the separated product is either an oily liquid

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

known as olein or a solid crystalline block such as stearine, for
example.

Oily acid
(fatty acid)

Oil (fat)

Glyc

j Alkali

Soap
H Cl

Oily acid
(fatty acid, for example* Stearine)

Modern methods of splitting fats no longer always take the
roundabout path of soap making. They follow the direct one
that employs catalysts, enzymes, and super-heated steam.

CHAPTER NINE

Protein

The body-building material, as typical in animals as carbo¬
hydrates are in plants, is protein. But the plant, too, manu¬
factures protein, particularly at one stage of development, that
of seed formation. This is where the animal and plant worlds
meet.

At the stage where the plant is exhaling scent, the life active
in its blossoms is a strong attraction. Butterflies come winging
to the out-poured fragrance. Bees arrive to drink the nectar.
Beetles are drawn to the scent and linger happily around it.
Bees, butterflies and beetles come and go, visit other flowers,
thus carrying on the fertilizing process. A constant rhythm of
approach and withdrawal, enticement and fructifying takes place
here as part of the larger rhythm of seed formation and ethereal-
ization.

The movement and rhythm of the insect world find ex¬
pression in the seed substance known as protein. This is not to say
that animal substance is transferred directly to the seed by insects;
it is rather the active exchange between plant and universe taking
place in all this movement which finds physical expression in
seed-protein. It is of no consequence whether this fertilizing ex¬
change is effected with the help of insects or of the whole atmo¬
sphere, as in the case of wind-pollenization.

When wheat flour is made into dough and kneaded in a stream
of running water until the starch is gradually washed away, a
sticky, stringy mass is left. This no longer contains starch or any
other carbohydrate, but only a protein called gluten. Protein in
this form is found in seeds of every kind.

We described above how a ‘carbon skeleton* is left when
carbohydrates are destroyed by heat. Protein also leaves a carbon
remnant when it is burnt, but the process is livelier, with foaming,
bubbling and an exuding of unpleasant odours. Who does
not remember the smell of burning hair or milk - both of
them proteins? Animal protein (in hair, milk, meat, wool,
silk, glue, etc.) behaves like vegetable protein. Since the typical

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE
plant substance is carbohydrate and the typical animal substance
is protein, the protein found in seeds attests to plant and animal
worlds having met there.

We can discover something of the nature of proteins by break¬
ing them down. Caustic soda can be used, as in processing oil.
After prolonged boiling the mixture gives offa penetrating odour
recognizable as ammonia (NH3), a nitrogen compound. Here
we discover traces of a basic substance not yet encountered in the
vegetable kingdom.

When protein is broken down with potassium and the break¬
down product is dissolved in water and treated with iron salts,
a beautiful intense blue called Prussian blue appears in the solu¬
tion. It is interesting to follow what has happened here. Potassium,
a substance with a strong affinity to life, has withdrawn hydrogen
and oxygen, the elements present in water, from the protein.
Carbon and nitrogen, the components of cyanide, arc left. This
substance is one of the deadliest poisons known to man. But
potassium cyanide in combination with iron salts produces
Prussian blue, which is not poisonous.

6KCN + FeSO+ -» K4Fe(CN)r, + K2SC4

Cyanide of 4- Ferrous — * Potassium + Potassium

potassium sulphate ferrocyanide sulphate

3K4FcCN6 + 2Fc,(S04), -» Fc4|(Fc(CN)„)I, +6K2S04
Potassium Ferric Prussian + Potassium

ferrocyanide sulphate blue sulphate

We may say that iron ‘heals’ the poison by making it non-
poisonous. And were it not for iron’s healing property we should
be constantly poisoned by the cyanide compounds formed in the
process of digestion. The iron in our blood, however, instantly
transforms these compounds into harmless ones. (Cf. Chapter
Twenty-nine.)

A more exact analysis of protein shows it to be composed of
four elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Its gross
formula is given as:

C?2oldt 134 1^218 ^248

PROTEIN

But the structure of this protein molecule is anything but clear.
We know that it can be split into smaller complexes known as
peptones by careful disintegration, such as it is subjected to by
enzymes present in saliva and the stomach (pepsin). These in
turn can be split into still smaller complexes known as peptides
under careful disintegrative action, for example by trypsin, the
intestinal fermenting agent. These can with care be broken
down still further by pancreatic enzymes, for example, or by
being carefully boiled with acids and alkalis. This separates them
into the so-called building blocks of protein, the amino acids.

Now all this is very interesting, but protein becomes un¬
imaginably complicated. Does it not make us suspect that protein
is only so complicated when analysed, or - in other words -
broken down? For all analysing is actually destruction. Is it not
conceivable that living protein, as it comes from nature, may not
really be at all complicated?

For the time being let us keep in mind just the fact that
protein is the product of four interacting elements : the formative,
life and fire forces we already know, plus a fourth entity which
finds expression in nitrogen.

CHAPTER TEN

Nitrogen

iere is nitrogen to be found in nature? Practically spcak-

VV ing, it is present in a free state only in the atmosphere. In
fact, from a quantitative standpoint it is the carrier of air, for air
is 80% nitrogen to 20% oxygen. Let us now consider whether
nitrogen is suited to be air’s carrier in other, more essential
respects.

A study of the breathing process shows that the nitrogen in¬
haled is exhaled again, laden with moisture and carbonic acid.
There is no change either in its composition or in its volume.
What purpose docs nitrogen serve, then, if it conics out exactly
as it went in?

When one tries to live into the movement of nitrogen stream¬
ing in and out in breathing, it can be experienced as an oscillating
exchange between man and world ; nitrogen moves in pendulum¬
like rhythm back and forth between the two. So we come to
regard it as the carrier of motion and rhythm, enabling oxygen
to be inhaled, and the used air to be expelled again.

What would happen if there were no nitrogen in the atmo¬
sphere? We should be burnt up by the concentrated oxygen.
The dilution of oxygen by nitrogen makes breathing and its
rhythm possible. Even the slightest variation in the nitrogen
content of the air around us quickens or slows breathing to a
surprising degree. Medical science has come to realize how great
a role rhythmic breathing plays in health and illness.

A person in normal health breathes eighteen times per minute.
This adds up to 1,080 breaths per hour and 25,920 breaths per
day. The latter number has, as we shall see, a cosmic reference.

In the course of a year, the sun makes one complete round of
the zodiac. It rises on March 21 at the vernal point, which today
is in the sign of Pisces. Day by day its rising-point progresses,
from Pisces to Aries, to Taurus, to Gemini, and so on, returning
after a year to the sign of Pisces. This vernal point, however, is
not identical with that of the previous year, but slightly behind
it. As millennia go by, the sun’s vernal point thus travels around

NITROGEN

the Zodiac in a direction counter to its annual course. At the
time of Christ's birth, the sun rose on March 2r in the sign of
Aries. Thus, in the approximately 2,000 years that have elapsed
since then, the vernal point has travelled through almost one
entire constellation. It takes 25,920 years for the vernal point to
go all round the zodiac. This period of rime is known as a Platonic
year.

We see, then, how our breathing keeps pace with the great
rhythm of the sun. One human breath mirrors a solar year; one
day's breaths reflect the number of solar years in a cosmic year.

This throws light on nitrogen’s role as carrier of rhythm and
movement, as well as of the airy element; nitrogen repeats
universal rhythms in the microcosm, man.

June July

A still clearer picture emerges from a study of the movement
of air currents around the earth. The air mantle is in constant
rhythmic motion. Trade winds, monsoons and other well-known
air currents are not the only phenomena of this rhythmic pattern-

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

ing: the atmosphere as a whole is a manifold, rhythmically
moving organism which serves as the earth’s breathing system.
Nitrogen is the carrier of this breathing as it manifests in wind
and storms and weather.

Again, nitrogen seems inappropriately named. It should be
called movement-substance, or air-stuff.

Nitrogen is of such a nature as to lend itself to being a carrier
of feeling as well as of breathing. Everyone knows how closely
related to feeling breathing is. When we feel joyful our breath
quickens. When grief weighs on the soul, breath comes slowly
and heavily. Sanguine people have a faster pulse and breath-
count than melancholic natures do. Breathing is a constant
rhythmic mediating between man and his surroundings. Every
breath we draw brings the outside world into us. This enables
us to have a feeling of our surroundings, similar to a touching
with hands and fingers or a grasping with thought. One of the
greatest achievements of the new approach to man inaugurated
by Rudolf Steiner was the discovery that the breathing system
is the physiological basis of feeling, as the nervous system is of
thinking.

A distinctive social fact is that wc all breathe the same air;
there is nothing we do so much in common as breathing. All
other possessions tend to be individually owned, and people
even go out of their way not to share objects of personal use.
No modern person likes to eat out of the same bowl with others.
But we all enjoy the air in common. Certainly there are fresh-air
fiends who even want their own air to breathe and cannot bear
to be shut up with others in a single room. This is especially true
of the English. And what is the reason for it, if not egoism? Is
the fact of my inhaling something of another person’s being not
a way of feeling what his nature is - feeling it lovingly?

Since carbohydrate is the substance of plants, they are bound
to the soil and have the power neither of movement nor of feel¬
ing. The typical animal substance is protein. This is in part the
product of cosmic movement, which comes to physical mani¬
festation in nitrogen. And in the blossom, where plant and
animal worlds touch and commingle, the plant-protein of the
seed grows as the fruit of that meeting. In seeds, with their

5»

NITROGEN

freedom to separate from the mother plant and seek new homes,
plants acquire a certain mobility*

Warmth

Mobility

■ Warmth

Carbohydrate {plant substance) Protein (animal-substance)

It is significant that nitrogen is found only in the free state in
inorganic nature, and never as part of any chemical compound.
Since nitrogen is the carrier of movement, it cannot be bound. It
must be free to move. But technology has succeeded with enor¬
mous effort in tying nitrogen to oxygen. The two substances are
forced under pressure through an arc of electric flame (in the
Birkeland-Eyde-Schonherr process). This yields saltpetre, or
nitric acid, a material used in the manufacture of nitro-cellulose
(guncotton), nitro-glycerin, picric acid, and all the other modern
explosives. Saltpetre was even an ingredient of the old-fashioned
gunpowder invented by the monk Schwarz.

Now what is an explosive if not imprisoned motion? And there
is, in fact, scarcely a single explosive that does not contain
imprisoned nitrogen.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Cosmic Nature of Earth’s Substance

It is natural to ask whether the forces which work in nature,
and whose imprint we find in nature, could not be traced
back into the cosmos. In other words, what is the cosmic origin
of those forces which we have called cosmic fire, life, form and
movement, and which express themselves physically in hydrogen,
oxygen, carbon and nitrogen? And are most of earth’s other
familiar substances also an expression of this cosmic interweaving,
and to be understood in relation to it?

If the chemical elements are arranged in a sequence based on a
scale of increasing atomic weight, their characteristic qualities
reappear at definite intervals. We find that the seven elements in
the first scries, arranged according to weight, characteristically
show no interrelationship :

Series 3, Li Be B C N O F

7 9 n 12 14 1 6 19

But if we proceed beyond fluorine, the next higher atomic
weight belongs to sodium, and we see at once that it repeats
lithium’s essential qualities. Magnesium, which follows it in the
second series, shows a like relationship to beryllium, aluminium
to boron, silicon to carbon, phosphorus to nitrogen, sulphur to
oxygen, and chlorine to fluorine:

Series 2m Na Mg Al Si P S Cl

23 24 27 28 31 32 35-5

The next substance in the weight-series is potassium, with
qualities which arc at once recognized to be almost identical with
those of sodium and lithium. This is the start of a third octave,
with potassium related to sodium, calcium to magnesium,
scandium to aluminium, and so on:

Series 3* K Ca Sc etc.

39 40 44

THE COSMIC NAT U FIE OF EARTH'S SUBSTANCE

If we proceed through the whole list, we find twelve such
octaves. Details and exceptions will be discussed later. The
significant fact discovered in the series is that matter is subject to
a rhythmic ordering. Even atomic weight is the expression of
rhythm, as we showed above. It is really not surprising that the
law of single and multiple proportion (Avogadro), which defines
the rhythmic character of matter, reappears in essence in a new
metamorphosis as Newlands* law of octaves* This law was later
developed by Meyer and Mendelieff into the Periodic Table of
the Elements,

Just as the laws discovered by Avogadro were narrowed down
into a spatial picture of the atom, so the rhythmical principles
expressed in the Periodic Table were developed into a spatial
concept which accounted for the rhythmical qualities of sub*
stances by relating them to the number of electrons attached to
an atomic nucleus. The search for a qualitative explanation of the
varieties of matter seemed to call for the existence of a kind of
primal nucleus, surrounded by electrons in various numbers and
orbits, from which the qualitative periodicity of substances
emerged (Moseley).

We are not required to oppose these hypotheses, so long as we
remain aware of the reality that lies behind them. Goethe did not
battle against Newton's wave theory of light in itself, but against
the belief that it explained the reality of colour. The balancing
of polarities always issues in rhythms. We can therefore expect
to find a rhythmical quality - expressed in the wave-character
of colours - as the balance between light and darkness* But
colour-vibrations are to be understood as merely the physical
manifestation of the nature of colour. They arc no more the
reality of colour than an anatomical description of a human
body is the man himself. Similarly, hypothetical pictures of the
nature of substance, developed in theorizing about atoms and
electrons, are to be considered simply as mathematical expressions
of physical aspects of matter; the reality underlying the physical
has to be grasped intuitively and gradually brought to light*

Can anything be said clearly about this reality? Certainly the
rhythmical characteristics of substances and processes, as found
in chemistry, are very like the rhythmical periodicities found in

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

music* The repetition of note-qualities at certain intervals, parti¬
cularly octaves, forms part of the subject-matter of harmony*
The periodic system of chemical elements is an expression of the
same essential laws.

The correspondence between chemical and musical laws can
be traced step by step* Avogadro showed that chemical elements
combine in single and multiple proportions. Taking hydrogen
as our basis for comparison, we find it has the ratio i : i to chlorine
in hydrochloric acid* In water, H20, there are two parts of
hydrogen to one of oxygen. Oxygen is therefore called bivalent*
As we have already seen, there are substances capable of forming
compounds in various ratios. Manganese is one of these; it forms
oxides up to manganese heptoxide. Since oxygen is bivalent, the
proportion of manganese in the various oxides, calculated in
terms of hydrogen, can be shown as follows:

Manganese

oxide

MnO

Manganese

sesquioxidc

Mn20:

Manganese

dioxide

Mn02

Manganese

trioxide

MnOa

Manganese

heptoxide

Mn20-

Proportion of Mn in terms of H
Proportion of Mn in terms of H
Proportion of Mn in terms of H
Proportion of Mn in terms of H
Proportion of Mn in terms of H

1:2

1:3

1;4

1:6

i:y

Other substances, such as iron, favour the ratios 1:2 and 1:3*
Phosphorus favours 1:3 and 1:5, sulphur 1:2, 1:4 and 1:6. All
these ratios, however, arc within one octave, ranging from 1 : 1
to 1:7. They are found also in the musical intervals of the first,
second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. Perhaps it is not
inappropriate to express chemical facts in musical terms and to
say, for example, that ferrous chloride (FeCl2) sings in seconds,
while ferric chloride (FeCl3) is the voice of the third in chlorine
iron compounds.

Chemistry may thus properly be called music in matter. Music
is an ordering; it brings order everywhere and can order the
feeling-life of its hearers, as everyone knows who has felt himself

THE COSMIC NATURE OF EARTH’S SUBSTANCE

inwardly brought into order by a symphony or some other piece
of good music. Music can be shown to have a formative and
ordering effect even on physiological processes. More than this:
the phenomenon of the Chladnian sound-figures demonstrates
the ordering effect of musical sound on matter. This familiar
phenomenon is produced by strewing elder-pollen on a metal
plate and then playing a note by stroking the edge of the plate
with a violin bow. This causes ordered patterns to appear in the
pollen dust. These patterns change if the sound is varied. As one
thinks of the ordering power of music working right down into
matter, one may ask what is responsible for the rhythmic order¬
ing that binds or frees material substances? It is chemical activity.
The word chemistry comes from the Egyptian and means ‘the
hidden’. And chemistry is indeed the music hidden in matter.

Now, looking at a realm even higher than that of music, let
us think of going out on a clear, summer night and of the awe
we feel as we behold the sublime order of the stars, with the
planets making their wonderful curves and loops against the
majestic patterns of the constellations. Reverent wonder is the
natural response in every human soul. People of earlier times felt
this even more strongly, but with a different background.

It is possible today to calculate the paths of the planets for
decades and even centuries ahead, to say which planets will be
in conjunction or opposition, when and where. The ancients
could not do this. But they had an immediate experience of the
starry order, which Plato expressed when he spoke of the ‘music
- or harmony - of the spheres’. In our abstract modem way of
thinking we connect quite different concepts with words and
phrases, and we imagine the ‘music of the spheres’ to have been
Plato’s subjective way of expressing an artistic experience. A
more searching inquiry shows that in earlier times people lived
in a different state of consciousness, for which the ordered move¬
ment of the planets was clairaudiently perceptible as a musical
experience. Apart from the fact that the stars imprinted their
order on everything earthly and human - the priest-sages of
Chaldea, Babylonia and Egypt looked to the stars for the guidance
of society and much else - we can easily see that earth-time
reflects star rhythms. Minutes, hours, days, months, years, epochs

THE NATURE Ob SUBSTANCE

and ages are all measurements taken from cosmic patterns and
happenings.

Time plays an essential role in music; thus astronomical laws
are again related to the laws of music. Musical intervals and
harmonies are an expression of universal rhythms. The relation
of the seven planets to the fixed stars, especially the twelve
zodiacal constellations, is built on a rhythmical law that finds
reflection in the seven intervals and the twelve semi-tones of the
scale.

Nowadays it is not customary to speak of seven planetary
spheres surrounding the earth. For one thing, the moon is not
reckoned one of the planets, but as a satellite of the earth, and the
sun is considered a fixed star, not a planet. If, on the other hand,
we adopt the geocentric Ptolemaic system and call Moon, Venus,
Mercury, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn planets, then Uranus,
Neptune, Pluto and some planetoids arc missing from the
picture.

If, however, we avoid abstractions and simply go by what wc
see from the earth, it cannot be denied that from the spatial
standpoint Sun and Moon contain the earth within their spheres
just as the planets do. And there is an astronomical reason for
believing that Uranus, Neptune and Pluto became attached to
our planetary system only within relatively recent times.

Looking at the planetary spheres which, from the earth view¬
point, do actually enclose it, wc find that an up-to-date under¬
standing of Ptolemy’s geocentric system is indeed possible. The
otherwise irreconcilable difference between the geocentric and
heliocentric systems is overcome from the standpoint of the
spheres.

The geocentric and heliocentric systems are probably each
correct from a certain angle. Recent ideas about the lemniscate
movement of the sun may perhaps justify both concepts. So wc
feel entitled to speak of the earth and seven encircling planetary
spheres.

Stellar movements, music and chemistry thus seem to be
varied expressions of one and the same cosmic ordering force.
For astronomy to reduce the stellar universe to a mathematically
calculable mechanism, as it has done in recent centuries, was just

THE COSMIC NATURE OF EARTH’S SUBSTANCE

as mistaken as to ascribe colour phenomena to wavelengths or to
call the physical body described by anatomy a human being. A
higher cosmic order permeates the universe and manifests itself
at different levels, down to ultimate physical expression in earth
substances. These dearly show the imprint of their starry origin.

In this connection we are led to ask - how does cosmic being
manifest? We showed above how oxygen, for example, carries
the idea of the plant into earthly appearance, and how carbon
forms it In just the same sense that plants are ideas made manifest
in earthly matter, every substance is the materialized expression
of a process, of a cosmic essence. This essential being dwells in
the world of stars, but the world of dense dead matter bears its
imprint everywhere.

If we ask why matter has become so dense and fixated, we
must cast a look on electricity. We will study a candle flame and
note what happens to the burning wax. The hard wax turns
into an oily fluid, which is absorbed by the wick and changed
into a gas. As the gas bums, heat and light arc given off Here
we see a dematerializing process going on, a disappearance of
substance. But if the two ends of a wire fastened to an induction
coil arc placed in the flame, so that an electric current sparks
across from one electrode to the other, the process is suddenly
reversed. The flame caves in, the production of heat and light
stops almost completely, and a black carbon skeleton builds up
between the two ends of the wire. This can be taken as a picture
of materialization.

Electricity invariably plays the role of a condensing and
materializing agent. Anyone who has handled a battery or an
induction coil will recall the peculiar odour given off by el jctric
sparks. Some say they smell like phosphorus, or even sulphur.
But sulphur has nothing to do with it; the assumption that it has
conics from mistaking sulphur-tipped matches for phosphorus
matches. But phosphorus also is not responsible for the odour.
Phosphorus simply does what electric sparks do: it condenses
oxygen to ozone - the real source of the smell.

302 ->203

3 parts oxygen -> 2 parts ozone

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Electricity, then, is a condenser* In contrast to light, which
radiates, it is a densifying and materializing force* It can be called
light's opposite pole - earth-related counter-light. So we can
understand how electricity forces into earthly form the beings
and images of which the universe is full.

The process observed in the burning candle shows heat to be
an essential phase of both materialization and dematerialization.
We described earlier how hydrogen forms a heat-mantle round
the earth and how this fire-substance lends wings to the rhythm
linking being and appearance. Condensed warmth is the basis
of all the phenomena of nature. But what would happen if
matter were composed solely of this densified heat? It would be
forever vanishing away, incapable of continued existence on
earth. Electricity endows it with stability.

The concepts offered by atomic physics are extremely inter¬
esting in this connection. It postulates atomic nuclei capable of
producing heat under certain conditions. But a ring of rotating
electrons encircles these nuclei. What is the reality behind such
a picture? Heat has been captured and condensed by the flowing
electricity; in other words, electricity has bound stellar forces to
earth substances.

In this sense we may say that matter is the hieroglyphic writing
of the universe. Anyone who trains himself to wide-awake
observation of nature's physiognomy can daily experience some
aspect of this truth.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Star Patterns and Earthly Substances

The researches referred to throughout this volume, but more
especially in Chapter Three, indicate that the organic
kingdoms depend for the formation of their very substance on
sun and moon, as well as on the relationship of these to the fixed
stars. Everyone knows, indeed, that plants, animals and man are
all decisively influenced in their physical development by forces
from outside the earth* Seasonal changes make this particularly
evident. But they are just one of the countless examples that
could be given of the way in which the earth is affected by its
movement among and its changing relationships with other
heavenly bodies. And the whole surrounding universe plays a
part in the processes that bring matter into being and again
dematerialize it. This is true even with respect to the mineral
kingdom. But science has not yet looked into this, so fettered has
it been by its adherence to the law of the conservation of matter.

The author conducted a further series of experiments to fmd
out in concrete detail what the effects of these influences were.
Cress seeds were analysed to determine how much potassium,
phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, sulphur and silicic acid they
contained, with the following results;

24 mg. phosphoric acid per gram of seed
18 mg. potassium per gram of seed
7 mg. calcium per gram of seed
6 mg. magnesium per grain of seed
6 mg. sulphuric acid per gram of seed
O' 1 mg. silicic acid per gram of seed

This analysis was repeated every two weeks. When the seeds
were kept in a tightly corked bottle, the results were constant.

Later, seeds of the same batch were set to germinate in double-
distilled water in bowls of rock crystal covered by bell jars to
keep the dust out. After fourteen days the plants were 4-5 cm.
high. They were then removed from the bowls, dried and burnt,
and the ash analysed. Since no minerals of any kind came into

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

contact with the growing seedlings and none were removed,
the final figures obtained in the analysis ought to have been the
same as at the outset if the law of the conservation of matter was

mg. per I gr. seed

O Full -moon
O New-moon

— - Control - analysi s (seeds)

- - P2 O s concent of seedling* per Igr, of seeds

- K^O . ■■ *»

Kg' 5

The emergence and passing away of phosphorus and potassium
during the period from June to December, 1939.

STAR PATTERNS AND EARTHLY SUBSTANCES

correct- This was not the case, however. The graphs on p. <58
indicate the variations in the phosphorus and potassium over a
period of half a year*

These graphs show that the phosphorus and potassium content
of the seeds rose and fell in rhythmic intervals; the emergence
of these substances out of non-material states of being, as well as
their disappearance from a material stage into an imponderable
one, follows the rhythm of the moon phases. But the moon is
both an earth satellite and a reflector of the entire cosmos, parti¬
cularly of the sun and its movement through the Zodiac.

Now, except at one point in each, the two graphs show a char¬
acteristic rhythm of even alternation, with the full moon favour¬
ing the emergence of substance and the new moon favouring its
disappearance. In the phosphorus graph this point falls in August,
while in the counter-rhythm of potassium (cf. Fig, 5), it comes
in September* It seems that every substance has such a point where
the even alternation is disturbed and full moon and new moon
exchange their roles. And this point seems to have a relation to the
sun's position as it moves month by month through the twelve
zodiacal constellations.

This is not to say that the relation of all earth’s substances to
the constellations has already been experimentally established.
Research of this kind has barely been started. We merely point
to the possibilities it opens up. Details of further findings made
in the course of this experimental work will be communicated
later.

We must now try to dispel some of the confusion prevailing
on the subject of zodiacal signs and constellations. At the start
of our era the sun rose on the first day of spring, March 21 , in
the constellation Aries. This point on the horizon is called the
vernal point. In our discussion of nitrogen we mentioned the
fact that it takes the vernal point one Platonic year (25,920 sun-
years) to complete one round of the Zodiac. Thus far, in the
approximately 2,000 years that have elapsed, the vernal point
has progressed far enough to rise in the constellation Pisces, The
spring sun no longer rises in Aries, as it did, but in Pisces. Astro¬
logy, however, continues to place the vernal point under the
sign of Aries, and to say that Aries is to be called the spring sign

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

for all future reference. Looked at in this way, the vernal point
becomes a mere convenient device for anchoring a system of co¬
ordinates* The division of the Zodiac into twelve equal segments,
called by the traditional names of the twelve zodiacal constella¬
tions, made it necessary to distinguish constellations from the
so-called 'signs’ thus arbitrarily created. This explains why the
'signs’ of the Zodiac are already one whole constellation behind
the real positions of the stars and will fall still further behind as
time goes on.

We must take into account the fact that the zodiacal constella¬
tions vary considerably in size and that the heavens are not
divided into twelve equal segments* When in the following
pages we associate the twelve months with the twelve constella¬
tions, we have only a very rough correspondence in mind*

We showed above how cosmic forces interact in the formation
of starch;

Cosmic form

Starch is the product of cosmic fire, cosmic life and cosmic
formative forces. Three substances, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon,
are the end-products of its dissolution. We sought traces of their
cosmic origin in their physical and chemical behaviour.

Protein may similarly be described as the product of an inter¬
weaving of four cosmic principles:

Cosmic movement

STAR PATTERNS AND EARTHLY SUBSTANCES

Now where are these cosmic signposts pointing? What is the
origin of these substances which seem to be the basis of all
organic nature?

If we follow the activity of hydrogen in the living kingdoms
through a whole year’s cycle, it obviously reaches a maximum
in high summer. The most intensive etherealization of plant
substances takes place at this warmest time of the year. Seeds
start to ripen, and oil, materialized cosmic fire, begins to form
in them.

High summer comes in August, the month when the sun
passes through the constellation of the Lion, which has always
symbolized flaming courage and all such fiery attitudes of souk

Old Oriental picturings of lions express this characteristic in
a flaring mane which surrounds the head like a golden sun-aura.
It may be assumed that the representations of zodiacal figures
found in old calendars retain something of the ancient wisdom
hidden in pictures. These were the work of priests of olden times,
and were never arbitrary, but rather pictorial records of what they
knew about the Zodiac, Naturally, these pictures are not to be
grasped by a trifling approach, nor are they meant to portray
physical animals. They arc to be thought of as depicting processes
and activities in artistic and pictorial, but at the same time real,
images. They were a very real experience to men of old.

The cosmos was recognized by the ancients to have twelve
distinctly different phases of activity, and they therefore ascribed
twelve characteristics to these heavenly forces. And though we
have lost the capacities that conceived these images, we can still
feel the truth they symbolize if we approach them with artistic
and unprejudiced sympathy.

Leo, the lion, is in this sense the representation of fire-related
forces raying from his segment of the universe into all levels of
activity and manifestation: the soul-spiritual, the biological, the
mineral. Their final manifestation is in hydrogen and its activity;
here the sublime process comes to rest. One cannot help thinking
of the adage, "Matter is the last step on the path of God/

Oxygen, on the other hand, reaches the climax of its activity
in nature when the earth is saturated with the fertile moisture of
melting snow or mild spring showers, the season when sap

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

begins to stream through roots and stems and there is stirring and
germinating everywhere.

This is the moment just before the coming of spring, toward
the last part of February, when the sun is passing through Aqu¬
arius, *the water-carrier'. Here is a picture of fertility, the ancient
symbol of an activity that blessed and fertilized the earth. Streams
of quickening water drench the land and summon into earthly
appearance all manner of living forms. This is the opposite pole
to Leo’s fire-process, and is therefore more to the fore at the
opposite season. Oxygen is active at the time when all through
nature life is being carried over into physical form with the
inflow of fertilizing, saturating water. High summer is the season
of oxygen’s polar opposite, hydrogen: a subtle fire-process,
which everywhere dissolves form and etherealizes matter. These
two processes are as opposite in character as the two zodiacal
figures Leo and Aquarius are in space.

An objection everyone is sure to raise is that in the tropics, the
southern hemisphere and at the poles, plants go through their
various life stages at a quite different season. In this connection,
let us consider the following.

What might be called the classical cycle of the seasons is a
phenomenon of the temperate zones, and so of the more highly
civilized parts of the earth. And this normal cycle depends on a
balance being kept between terrestrial and cosmic forces. This
leads to a harmonizing rhythm between the changing relationships
of earth and sun (as cosmic representative). Where earth forces
gain the upper hand, as at the poles, or where life is dominated
by cosmic radiating forces, as at the equator, abnormal, one¬
sided conditions result,

Goethe gave the key to a quite new way of looking at all the
phenomena of nature with his theory of colour, which cannot
be too highly valued. Between the poles of light and darkness
live the rhythms inherent in colour; between cosmos and earth
arises the wealth of rhythmic life-phenomena of the earth’s
surface; between poles and equator the rhythmic alternation of
the seasons comes into being. The Goethean concept of the two
poles and a third new element, rhythm, which reconciles these
two extremes, throws fresh light on everything in the organic

STAR PATTERNS AND EARTHLY SUBSTANCES

kingdom. Light and darkness create the rainbow; earth and
cosmos create the living kingdom of the earth.

The earth itself is a living organism - a fact still familiar to
Kepler. The zone between the poles and the equator is the scene
of manifold rhythmic phenomena that mirror cosmic rhythms.

For the earth, the regular succession of the seasons is like
human breathing. We have shown how cosmically regulated
this breathing rhythm is - a reflection of the sun-rhythm of the
Platonic vear. 13ut the head and the metabolism of man, which
correspond to the earthly polarities of pole and equator, have
their own independent rhythms* Therefore cosmic rhythms arc
mirrored only in the middle region of both man and earth*

Details of such interrelationships are very complex. But if one
approaches them with a feeling for the whole picture, many
phenomena of earth and cosmos will disclose their secrets.

Now let us return to the question: Where is aerogen (nitrogen)
most strongly active? We recall the description given earlier of
the forming of protein. It begins with visits of butterflies, bees
and beetles to the flowers, where nitrogen's mobility enables
seeds to form* This process coincides with the blossoming of
plants, die swarming of insects, with the wind carrying pollens
of grass and blossoming grain over the countryside.

Such arc the main events of the end of May, when the sun is
passing through the constellation Taurus. Again, all this is in
keeping with the ancient view, which used die Bull as symbol of
the forces of motion* Nowhere do we find an old portrayal of a
bull lying still and peaceful in a meadow; he is always depicted
charging, or otherwise most active. In none of the twelve
zodiacal images is movement as much emphasized as it is in
Taurus. This sign is clearly the image of universal, all-inclusive
forces of movement, which are active at all possible levels, do wn
to the final one: tile forming of nitrogen. Thus the zodiacal
region from which forces of movement issue is called Taurus,
the Bull.

Now die opposite pole of motion is fixity, just as we showed
nitrogen to be die carrier of motion, so carbon was described as
the carrier of form. Carbon is nature's great stabilizer. It forms
the scaffolding in plants, animals and man, and is the skeleton

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

left after their dissolution* When, in November, the first frosts
set the mark of death on the life of nature, when withered
remnants of vegetation litter the fields and bare trees look like
skeletons in the forest, then comes the time of predominating
carbon forces.

This is the time when the sun is travelling through the con¬
stellation Scorpio* Forces issuing from this region of the heavens

have long been symbolized by the scorpion, with its deadly
sting and desiccated, skeletal body.

Antiquity had another name for this constellation: the Eagle*
This picture was an image of cosmic formative forces operative
not in the crudely physical, but on the highest level, that of
thinking. It depicted the eagle’s power to soar into the sun and
survey the scene below from a great height* This symbolized the
divine capacity given to man to reflect sublime facts in the
thoughts he forms. Materialism was responsible for the eagle
being forgotten and replaced by the symbol of death, the scorpion.

STAR PATTERNS AND EARTHLY SUBSTANCES

Carbon, the last manifestation of the scorpion-eagle forces,
also appears in several modifications* The shining diamond is as
high above the level of black coal as the soaring eagle is above the
crawling scorpion* Indeed, the eagle-qualities noted above have,
as it were, been materialized in the diamond's substance* The
constellation Eagle-Scorpion possesses a double nature: death in
tile scorpion, a soaring to loftiest heights in the eagle* We have
here a sort of phoenix-motif But natural death can be looked on
in the Goethean sense as a return to essential being, to the dis¬
embodied state* When a plant dies and becomes a carbon skeleton,
its being withdraws from the material condition into a world
we cannot see*

So every death frees a being into higher life. When nature's
being remanifests in spring, there is already a seed of death in all
its germinating sprouting growth, for without this seed there
can be no such thing as shape or form* Involution and evolution,
being and manifestation, death and resurrection: all these polar¬
ities, which are in turn but a single unity, belong to the nature
of the Scorpion-Eagle, the cosmic home of the forces from which
carbon issues.

Goethe expressed it:

Your soul will stay forlorn
Until you come to know:

To die and be re-bom.

Is Spirits way to grow.

A study of these four cosmic principles which breed the
material substances hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon
shows hydrogen and oxygen to be polar opposites in nature, like
the constellations Leo and Aquarius. Similarly, nitrogen (mo¬
tility) and carbon (fixity) belong to the opposite cosmic poles,
Taurus and Scorpio. The four together form a cross (efi Fig. 6).

It will be obvious from the above that the four substances
described are reflected in the four Aristotelian elements, fire,
water, air and earth. And we should notice the remarkable fact
that all four substances are found in our atmosphere, and are
indeed, the elements of all the organic kingdoms:

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Fire

Air

Water

Earth \

Pyrogen, or Hydrogen
Aerogcn, or Nitrogen
Biogen, or Oxygen
f Geogen
or

[Formative matter

Air, Protein,
organic nature

The cosmic cross: Leo, Aquarius, Taurus and Scorpio, could
thus be called the atmospheric cross, or the cross of the organic
cosmos.

These considerations may suggest a possibility of explaining
relationships between earth and universe, microcosm and macro¬
cosm, in a way suited to modern consciousness. It is right to
repudiate the old, unintelligible conceptions if one cannot arrive
at comprehensible, reasonable new ones. New methods of in¬
vestigation must work at this task. It would be disloyal to the
cultural heritage of Central Europe to ignore the meaning and
the majesty of the starry order and to fail to sense the deep con¬
nection between the heavens above and the earth below. In the
work of the great men of our past we find the germs of a new
understanding of these interrelationships.

The four constellations chosen for mention in the pages above
always enjoyed a privileged position. It is they who give the
essence of their being physical expression in hydrogen, oxygen,
nitrogen and carbon. Their harmonious interaction produces the
substance protein, the basis of all the more highly organized
forms of life.

The various properties of protein seem marvellous indeed as
one considers how it is formed of these four elements. Each has
its own well defined and extensive sphere of action, while
together they form a matrix for the development of the three
kingdoms, endowed with life (plants), soul (animals), and spirit
(man). We came to know oxygen as the element that carries life
into physical manifestation, nitrogen as the force that permeates
life with feeling and motion, hydrogen as the strongest power of
ascent from the material to the spiritual, carbon as the crystallizing
agent that brings what is endowed with spirit, soul and life into
physical manifestation.

STAR. PATTERNS AND EARTHLY SUBSTANCES

Protein

These four substances in various combinations and permuta¬
tions enable the creative cosmos to become effective for the
earth and to continue reproducing miniature likenesses of the
universe in earthly matter. This capacity is most apparent in the
seed. Its protein provides the material that brings the prototypal
image of the plant into physical manifestation.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Animals

Carbohydrate is the substantiality of plants, protein of animals.

The plant proteins in seeds are engendered as a physical pre¬
cipitation of the commingling in the blossom of plants and animal
worlds.

How are these plant proteins distinguishable from animal
protein? Chemical analysis cannot always tell one from the other.
But many people feel instinctively that there must be a qualitative
difference, and find clear evidence of it in digestion. Let us try
to answer this question by looking at the nature of animals.

The development of animals from a fertilized cell begins with
a completely vegetative process: the cell divides, creating a host
of offspring cells (the morula). This takes on a spherical form, the
blastula. Then an entirely new phase begins. The blastula starts
to 'turn outside in1, first becoming indented and then, as the
process continues, ending up with an outside sheath which com¬
pletely closes off an inner space, thus creating an inner and an
outer world. This stage is called the gastrula, and it is a decisive
one. For up to this point animal development was plantlikc. The
gastrula stage, however, is the start of a wholly new turn of
events. This formation was recognized by Haeckel to be the
basic pattern of animal development and the ancestral form of all
multicellular animal life.

The ‘entoderm1 - the interior layer of the embryo - formed by
this involution is the primal structure from which the animals
internal organs now develop. The nerves and senses system
develop from the outer cell layer, the ectoderm*. A wholly new
evolutionary principle has come into being with this division
into an inside and an outside.

The plant comes into physical manifestation as a direct result
of cosmic interaction. In the animal there is an impulse to close
off an inner enclave from the surrounding cosmos, and in this
enclosure an autonomous system of inner organs develops.

We are familiar with the fact that protein is formed by the
addition of nitrogen to the elements constituting carbohydrates.

THE ANIMALS

Wc need to fmd out whether this addition does not bring about
a complete reorganization of the whole basis of life, such as
enables it then to form the gastrula. There is just a hint of such
a sheath-formation in plant seeds, where nitrogen is first found
in an organic process and produces protein. All seeds form in
hollow spaces. This inclines one to see a close relationship between
nitrogen and gastrula formation.

We learned to recognize nitrogen as the carrier of mobility.
Now let us turn our attention to the plant again. It has its being
in light. It is formed by the universe and extends into the starry
cosmos. But it is entirely a product of forces outside its organism.
Its whole function is simply that of a carrier of life, of life en¬
dowed with shape by carbon and then etherealized again by
hydrogen. Carbohydrates are thus its characteristic substance.

Something quite different is needed for building animal
bodies, which have to house creatures endowed with autonomous
movement and sensation. Sensation may properly be called
motion of a higher order, soul-movement. Nitrogen acting
from outside the organism is incapable of providing the founda¬
tion for sensation. A basic intcriorizmg must occur, so that the
animal may become a unified organism capable of free, inde¬
pendent motion. To bring this about, animals take cosmic
formative forces into themselves to build up a system of internal
organs: heart, kidneys, lungs, liver, etc. The substance plants
produce is dependent on external light and subject to direct
irradiation by cosmic forces. The protein animals create is an
internal product, formed by cosmic forces which have been
'turned outside iu\ The internal organs of animals arc really an
intcriorizcd reflection of forces and processes of the external
universe, dynamic foci of an inner cosmos. Such investigators as
Paracelsus pointed this out long ago. The diagram overleaf may
serve as a chemical-dynamic illustration of the difference between
plant and animal protein.

Nitrogen is here again the physical agent that carries out this
fundamental movement of interiorization, of turning the cosmos
outside in. It is the carrier of motion in that it enables earthly
processes to repeat cosmic motions and rhythms in independent
organisms. Breathing, as a microcosmic repetition of the sun’s

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

of this.

We have touched only on such aspects of these processes as
have bearing on the forming of substances. Much else could be
learnt about them from other studies*

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Plant Poisons (Alkaloids)

Carbohydrate is the prime plant substance; plant proteins
are found only where animal and plant spheres overlap in
seed formation. Blossoms even seem like stationary butterflies,
with their fine colour and airy delicacy, while butterflies are
like blossoms free to flutter in the air, as Rudolf Steiner said.
This image pictures the exchange that takes place between the
plant and animal spheres in the most chaste and delicate kind of
intercourse, with the protein in the seed as its offspring.

Such is the case with those species of flowers that open fully
to the sun. But there are exceptions, species or families which
incline more to the animal sphere, and this is reflected in a
gastrula-likc blossom form. Among these are foxglove, various
lilies such as autumn crocus, aconite, henbane, nicotiana and
other nightshades. The blossoms of these species are cup-like, in
some cases forming hollows almost completely scaled off from
the world outside.

The family of Papilionaccae (in German, "butterfly-flowers7)
represents a halfway stage between the other two in some respects.
Most of them are non-poisonous. But all share one noteworthy
characteristic; they form enormous quantities of protein. It
almost seems as though their protein-forming tendency were a
safety-valve. Perhaps they would be poisonous if they were un¬
able to extrude all this protein.

Now what is it that makes plants poisonous? It is plant protein,
the same substance normally produced in seeds when plants are
fructified by the animal sphere, but - in the case of poisonous
plants - protein that has been denatured through too deep a
penetration by the animal nature. When plants go beyond what
is plantlike and take over formative processes that properly
belong only to the animal realm, there is a corresponding de¬
pression of the life-element in the protein formed. Protein is
always broken down by a development of conscious feeling and
autonomous motion; consciousness is always achieved only at
the expense of purely vegetative life. That is why, for instance,

8 1

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

nerve substance cannot be regenerated. But protein breakdown
is a normal function of the animal body. In the plant, where it is
abnormal, it produces poison.

Now what happens when the life-giving elements, oxygen
and hydrogen in the form of water, are removed from protein?
If no remnant of life remains, the result is cyanide:

{Cyanide)

This can be done in the laboratory, using sodium as the protein-
destroying element. It is well known that sodium greedily seizes
upon the elements of which water is composed ; this is why it
has to be kept under petroleum. Now a slow stepwise break¬
down and suppression of life-elements takes place in poisonous
plants, and this process generates the whole list of plant poisons
in substances ranging from protein to cyanide. A comparison of
the formulae of the various plant poisons with the formula of
protein presents a revealing picture of the gradual degeneration
protein undergoes. To simplify, we will shorten the protein
formula from C720Hn34O248N2jg to C7H1102,5N2, and simi¬
larly reduce the formulae for the plant poisons, thus:

Protein

C7 Hn

02.j

Coffein

C7H9

N 3-s

A tropin

c7 h9

N„.s

Morphium

c7h8

Strychnine

c, h7

Nicotine

c7 H10

Cyanide

C,-

These few examples serve to show the degeneration that takes
place between the normal protein stage and cyanide, the deadliest
of poisons. This poison-forming process is a gradual dying,
especially when animal protein is used as a basis of comparison.

What happens to animal protein when life leaves it? It becomes
carrion. The substances this process forms are called ptomaine
poisons. They are very closely related to plant poisons,

PLANT POISONS (ALKALOIDS)

Greek mythology tells of a magic garden where poisonous
plants grow. The autumn crocus still bears a name reminiscent
of the site of this garden: ‘colchicunT. It was in Colchis, a city
on the Black Sea coast below the Caucasus, long associated with
the voyage of the Argonauts, that the enchanted garden of
Hecate was situated.

The Black Sea is particularly striking for the great contrasts
that exist there side by side. Shores that one moment lie sunning
under skies of endless blue are suddenly overshadowed by black
clouds and whipped by stormy seas. The water contains unusual
amounts of both iodine and gold. Harsh cliffs adjoin paradisal
gardens. The ancients called this body of water 'The Inhospitable
Sea’.

Close by Hecate's sinister enchanted garden, where grew the
herbs that brought both death and wisdom, stood a temple of
Diana where people went to pray for life, earthly well-being and
fertility. They still knew in those days of the deep connection
between the development of consciousness and the process of
death and breakdown.

Poisonous plants and food plants may grow side by side and
even be closely related to each other. Death and life too are
polarities, which conceal between them, as a third element, the
whole span of human evolution.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Vitamins

During the nineteenth century, nutrition came to be looked
on as though it were a problem of physics. This was when
the great achievements of physical science were extended into
the realm of life through the researches of Liebig, Wohler and
Pettenkofer. As Wohler himself put it, the synthesizing of urea
gave a death-blow to the life force* which science had hitherto
postulated. The human organism began to be regarded as a
heat-powered machine. According to this concept, foods were
sources of heat-energy, fuels for stoking the human steam-engine.
Carbohydrates, fats and protein were scrutinized for their fuel
value, expressed in terms of calories, as though nutritive capacity
were simply heat-generating capacity.

Laymen in increasing numbers embraced a popularized form
of this conception. Many tried to inform themselves exactly as
to how many grammes or calories of carbohydrates, fats and
protein they needed daily, and many households felt the shadow
of this idea’s ghostly presence fall upon them. Shop windows
were decorated with the famous drawing of man represented as
a factory. The general manager’s office is in the head. From this
point, all sorts of telephone wires and other transmitting devices
carry directives to departments in the lower storeys. An escalator
in the oesophagus expedites food, shown as coal, down to the
stomach, where the boilers arc stoked. Exhaust gases escape from
this fabulous building through a chimncy-nosc.

This conception was put to the test by the Basle physiologist,
Bunge, and his associates in experiments with animals. One
group was fed on milk, an equal amount to each animal, making
sure it had a certain number of calorics as fuel, A second group
was fed on synthetic milk, a mixture of milk proteins, milk
sugar, milk fats, and salts. Both groups would have got along
equally well if nutritive and caloric values had really been as
identical as the prevailing view assumed. But the opposite turned
out to be the case: the animals fed on fresh milk grew up lively
and happy, while those fed on synthetic milk died off,

THE VITAMINS

The logical intellect of the time (1882) now came to the con¬
clusion that there must be some ingredient in fresh milk that had
escaped detection by chemical analysis. This ingredient must be
a very complex substance, but with more perfect and refined
methods of analysis it would eventually be isolated. Because of
its importance to life, this hypothetical substance was later
(1912) called 4vitamin\

A tidal wave of research now got under way, followed by a
flood of literature on vitamins too extensive to keep track of
Diseases (avitaminoses) caused by vitamin deficiencies in the diet
began to be recognized and tagged with A, B, C and D. This
led to assuming the existence of vitamins, which were then given
the same A, B, C, D tags. Later on, E, F, G, H and K vitamins
were added to the list. More recently, however, a renewed con¬
viction has developed that these latter vitamins arc somehow
related to the first-named group; that will be clear at the end of
this chapter.

Despite all the zeal and intelligence spent on vitamin research,
vitamins remained more or less a problem. All sorts of substances
were analysed as possible vitamin carriers. A typical case was that
of Vitamin C. Famed vitamin research men were finally able,
after years of painstaking work, to produce by fractionation an
extract that had an enhanced vitamin action in proportion to its
weight. But when they tried to isolate a definite substance in
this plant-juice concentrate they arrived at quite differently
structured substance. One scientist - the Norwegian O. Rygh -
described his product as a narcotine derivative, while the other
- the Hungarian Szent-GyorgyFs - was an aliphatic substance
related to sugar. But both were claimed to have a connection
with Vitamin C.

The situation was thus one in which two substances, each said
to be a direct or indirect carrier of Vitamin C, had nothing in
common chemically, as the formulae on p* 86 show.

The same sort of story, with two scientists searching for the
same vitamin and coming up simultaneously or in succession
with completely different substances, can be found repeatedly in
vitamin literature. It seems as though vitamins elude the chemical
approach. Studying the literature, one gets the impression that

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

vitamins are entities at a level above matter, forces active in
matter rather than themselves material. The so-called synthetic
vitamins now on the market are perhaps optimal carriers, but they
are full of surprises when it comes to therapeutic effectiveness or

Vitamin C

according to Szent-Gyorgyi
(1932)

noc\

I! )0

„°c/

Cti
I

HCOH
I

Ascorbic acid

non-cffectivcncss. This shows that the question of vitamin carriers
is by no means fully solved.

The following picture might serve to illustrate the situation.
A gramophone record can be made of hard rubber, of synthetic
resin, or of a number of other materials. Its composition is not
the important thing. What is important is the music, which is
graven into the record, and can be reproduced under suitable
conditions. Similarly, the chemical formula of a vitamin-bearing
substance is not as essential as the force that seeks out or builds
itself appropriate substances to work in.

Now what is the nature of the forces in Vitamins A, B, C
and D?

It may be helpful here to draw a Goethean picture of what he
might have called the physiognomy of the avitaminoses. Only
the outstanding features need be characterized for this purpose.
If they are correctly drawn, smaller details can be fitted into the
whole picture easily enough. We must take note too of how

according to O. Rygli
{1932)

Methyl nor-narcotinc

THE VITAMINS

the natural substances that carry vitamins fit into nature's living
processes. Knowledge of these interconnections will not be
furthered by studying isolated vitamins, but rather by a survey
of the total complex of Nature’s elementary processes.

It is said that Vitamin A is contained in oils, fats (especially
fresh butter), fruits and blossoms. There is an essential connection
between these various substances. Fruits and blossoms are products
of warmth processes predominant in plants at the warmest time
of year. Oils are the clearest expression of warmth qualities, and
in an earlier chapter wc therefore called them materialized
cosmic fire. From the chemical standpoint they arc simply
carbon skeletons clothed in a garment of hydrogen. Plant oils
burn and thus reveal their latent fire. Animal fats and oil have
the same character in their own special way. Whales, seals and
other Arctic mammals arc enclosed in an armour of fat that
regulates the warmth organism of these dwellers in the icy
depths.

What may wc say is warmth's essential nature? We sec it in
its most primal form in the warmth-element of plants, reaching
out to the highest levels of the summer atmosphere. We described
how the plant-being floats up on wings of hydrogen to the
outermost boundaries of the earth’s air-mantle. All other physical
warmth-phenomena repeat this process. Gases, fluids, metals - all
heated substances expand. Expansion is as characteristic of heated
minerals as growth is of living organisms under the influence of
warmth.

It is well known that the chief symptom of the illness resulting
from a deficiency of A vitamins in the diet is stunted growth.
Further progress of the disease results in atrophy, especially of
the eyes, and in other disturbances on the periphery of the
organism, the epithelium. Stunted growth is, however, the most
conspicuous effect.

When diets lack the stimulus supplied by oils, fats, fruits and
blossoms, the organism fails to generate warmth and growth is
inhibited. Quite clearly the periphery is the first part to suffer
from such deprivation; the skin and sense organs begin to show
unhealthy changes. We venture the opinion that Vitamin A is not
just this or that chemical substance, even though it is dependent

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

on matter for support, but, rather, living warmth that has created
an organic precipitate in fruits and blossoms, oils and fats.

Vitamin C, on the other hand, is found in leafy vegetables.
Indeed the green leaf is the basis of a plant’s existence, for through
it light is assimilated. Leaves and their nascent starches are
creations of light; they are organized and formed by light. In an
earlier chapter we described plant substance as an enchanted
rainbow, a rainbow that reappears in the blossom colours as the
plant reaches a peak of upward growth and is on the verge of
dissolution. We can follow this metamorphosis of light in plant
growth from its first material appearance in the leaf to its radiant
release in starry blossoms. The green leaf inay be called latent
light.

The avitaminosis due to lack of green vegetables in the diet is
scurvy. The immediate impression an open mind gets of a person
afflicted with this disease is that he lias a light-starved organism.
One can see what this means by looking at a plant grown in the
dark. It is ‘spineless’, floppy, lacks structure and wilts quickly.
There is no body to it, only a long pale shoot. The same depriva¬
tion in animals and man naturally produces somewhat different
symptoms. We may recall the gastrula formation which, in the
higher kingdoms, has intcriorizcd previously external forces, so
that the light from inside out is met by a light-process within.

Man’s skin is the organ which holds a balance between internal
and external light. Healthy persons maintain this balance; they
show it in a rosy complexion with a bloom on it and in a good
skin texture. The light that shines from the eyes of persons dear
to us is also inner light.

Now when outer light gets the upper hand, the skin turns
brown to protect the organism. But the balance can also be
similarly disturbed by a lessening of inner light, in which case one
gets an impression very like that of a weak, wilted plant. Persons
ill with scurvy also have a yellowish or brown skin colouring,
and the balance can be disturbed to a point where the skin
gradually breaks down. Poor texture permits bleeding, and
organs related to light-processes in the organism, such as the
kidneys and adrenal glands, are also affected.

Thus, neither narcotine nor ascorbic acid is the essential element

THE VITAMINS

in Vitamin C, but the living light materialized in green plant
leaves. And when this light latent in green portions of vegetables
is lacking in a diet, there is nothing to stimulate a radiating out
of inner light in man's organism.

Vitamin B is absorbed from eating the skins and hulls of fruits
and grains, especially unpolished rice.

It is an interesting part of a study of civilization to observe for
how long nations and even whole continents have to suffer for
lack of human insight. Rice is the staple of East Asian diets; a
large percentage of the population eats almost nothing else.
There were no nutritional problems when rice was eaten whole,
just as it was harvested. But as European civilization became in¬
creasingly influential and rice was put through modem mills
and de-hulling devices, the Malayans were one of the peoples
unable to get anything but polished rice. Beri-bcri was the result,
though at first its nature was not understood. Untold numbers
were felled by the disease. At first it was thought to be an epi¬
demic, some sort of plague* It chanced that a Dutch physician
in charge of beri-beri patients in the Dutch East Indies owned a
chicken-farm. The chickens were fed on polished rice. One day
the doctor had to recognize that they were falling ill of a disease
with symptoms similar to those of beri-beri. When this bad gone
on for some time, bran was fed to the chickens one day when no
rice was available. Surprisingly, the chickens recovered. Rice-bran
extract was administered with similar success in the hospitals,
with the result that beri-beri came to be recognized as a de¬
ficiency disease.

No catastrophe ensues when Europeans cat polished rice, for
they often eat black or brown bread, and these contain parts of
the grain hulls. Apples are often eaten with the peel, as are other
fruits. It is the Asian, subsisting almost exclusively on rice, who
becomes ill when it is polished.

It is obvious, then, that forces of some kind are hidden in the
sheath. In order to find our way into this problem, let us picture
boundless reaches of undifferentiated space and then imagine
rounding this space off into a great sphere with one circling,
shaping gesture. Would this not be the first step in the creation
of an ordered cosmos?

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

just such a gesture is depicted in all myths dealing with the
creation of the universe, when they describe the first act of
Divinity as the creation of heaven and earth. The creation of the
macrocosmic vault of heaven is the same act in infinity as the
creation of an enclosing boundary or shell round the finite
microcosm of the earth. It is impossible to conceive "space*
without boundaries; no matter how far out we extend the limits,
the concepts space and spatial order still contain an element of
fmiteness. Indeed, it is a big question whether cosmic space can
be grasped at all with our physical concepts of the spatial* Perhaps
the ancients, who pictured outer space as an enclosing shell with
the fixed stars attached to it, really had hold of an important
truth : the fact that an ordering of space can be achieved only
within a boundary* It is perfectly possible to conceive universal
space as a sphere, the boundaries of which reflect cosmic activity,
without thinking of these boundaries as physical. This is the scene
of the ordered star movements experienced as ‘the harmony of
the spheres* by ancient man. We described how these patterns
work as music right down into the chemistry of material sub¬
stances; how star patterns, music and chemical action are ex¬
pressions of one and the same universal force whose archetype
is the "shelf, the enclosing sheath of the cosmos. Sheath forces
are ordering forces, or chemical action.

Now if there is a lack of these forces in the diet, the inborn
chemistry, the primal inner order, of the organism, lacks stimula¬
tion, as becomes apparent in the first symptom of beri-beri. The
muscles of the ankle lose the power to contract. Examination
shows that they have lost their normal structure or patterning*
The muscle fibre gradually dissolves and becomes a pulp; para¬
lysis sets in, and the nerves degenerate. That is why Vitamin B
is called an anti-neuriric*

To repeat: Vitamin B is not this or that chemical substance,
even though it makes use of some such material, but rather an
ordering force at home in sheaths; in chemistry, inner structuring*

Vitamin D, lastly, is said to be present in fish-liver oils, and
phosphorus and sea salt both carry it. It would be hard to under¬
stand why fish-liver oils figure in the picture if we did not know
that cholesterol and lipoids formed by the liver are present there

THE VITAMINS

in solution- We know that these substances join forces with
carbon to build the framework of the whole organism; they are
the material of which supporting tissue and cell membranes are
made. It is quite correct to picture them as stages on the way to
bone-building. In arteriosclerosis, the walls of the arteries become
coated with cholesterol, which gradually calcifies.

Now cholesterol and lipoids have phosphorus in them, and
phosphorus gains added interest from this fact. Later on we will
describe in detail how this substance functions as a densifying,
mineralizing force in nature.

Salt that has just crystallized out of solution gives us an arche¬
typal picture of how the skeleton is formed. The human bony
system 'crystallizes* in the fluid embryo in the same way that salt
cubes take shape in the mother-solution. The details of this
process are naturally very complicated, but in the end it produces
the hard, solid mineral substance of the bones. The forces at work
here are densifying, shaping ones.

When these are lacking in the diet, the organism’s primal
formative forces lack the necessary stimulation, and the skeleton
is not properly completed. The resulting deficiency disease is
rickets.

Vitamin D, also, is not simply a chemical, but a shaping
universal force whose archetype is crystallizing salt.

Vitamin A
Vitamin B
Vitamin C
Vitamin D

Essence Carrier Avitaminosis

Warmth Oils Stunting

Order Hulls anu peel Beri-bcri

Light Leafy vegetables Scurvy

Form Lipoids Rickets

This table will bring to mind an earlier one in which the four
substances hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon were shown
as reflections of the Aristotelian elements. We can perhaps
suggest that the four vitamins are related to the same four sub¬
stances at a higher level. They may be conceived of as energies
not yet in a state of material fixation, forces capable of forming
complete healthy protein by their harmonious interaction.

Some time ago, the author did some experimenting to verify
what has been said above about the nature of vitamins. The ex-

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

perimetital set-up had to be adapted to the nature of vitamins
and their fluctuating radiation.

When light rays arc passed through a prism, the spectrum of
colours appears on a white background. This visible spectrum
passes over into an invisible extension at each end. At the red end
is infra-red, whose presence can be determined with a thermo¬
meter as warmth. At the violet end is ultra-violet, which, though
invisible, registers its presence chemically on a photographic

Alum, I od i ive

Warmth

Ughc

Chemtc a|
act ion

fig. 7

Tiie three parts of the spectrum : Warmth, Light, Chemical action. According
to the content of the absorption, Vessel A, one of the three parts is extinguished:

Through alum solution - Warmth (infra-red)

Through iodine solution - Light (the visible spectrum)

Through acsculin solution - Chemical action (ultra-violet)

plate. But we do not see the thing photographed. The 'picture*
that emerges after the plate is developed is due to a chemical
reaction caused by the invisible ultra-violet rays.

If a vessel containing a solution of alum is interposed between
the rays and screen, the warmth end of the spectrum disappears.
Infra-red is as though swallowed up, while the light and chemical
rays pass through unhindered. But if a vessel filled with an iodine
solution is interposed, all the visible light rays are absorbed, while
the chemical and warmth rays pass through undisturbed. In a
previous chapter wc described iodine as a light-thief. If, finally,
we interpose a vessel filled with a solution of aesculin, the gluco-
sidc contained in chestnut hulls, the ultra-violet chemical rays of
the spectrum disappear, though the light and warmth rays go
through as before.

This method makes it possible to distinguish between the

THE VITAMINS

cosmic forces combined in the spectrum and provides an experi¬
mental set-up in which any one of the single components can be
excluded. The interposed vessel is replaced by a double-walled
glass sphere, with a space between the inner and outer sphere to
hold the test solution. Three experimental fields are created by
filling this space in turn with solutions of alum, iodine and
aesculin, to shut out the rays of cosmic warmth, light, and
chemical-formative action.

We still lacked an experimental means of excluding the fourth
cosmic energy, the formative forces. These are not present in the
earthly spectrum. But Goethe’s colour-circle shows a heavenly
counterpart to the earthly one in the space between red and
violet. In the earthly spectrum, green is found between blue and
yellow, Goethe’s colour-circle shows heavenly purple, or peach-
blossom hue, opposite green. His idea of arranging the colours in
a circle, or in two triangles, at once brought life and meaningful
order into the whole; the linear spectrum conceals the real
nature of colour, which hovers between the material and non-
material.

This purple cannot be made by mixing red and violet as one
mixes blue and yellow to make green. Goethe produced peach-
blossom by letting the red end of one spectrum cross the violet
end of a second one. There is not the mixing of substances in¬
volved in making green of blue and yellow, but the much
subtler action of interpenetrating insubstantial rays. Purple is
thus in a special category. When it is ^ghtened, it becomes the
rosy colour of the human skin, ‘incarnate5. This hue is un¬
doubtedly the highest intensification and synthesis of which
colour is capable, a colour which is not fixed but exists in living
interplay. It constantly changes with the changing relationship
of soul and body. When the soul leaves the body, this rosy hue
at once changes into its opposite, a greenish hue. Peach-blossom,
or ‘incarnate', is thus a relative of purple.

We know that the linear spectrum has no boundaries, that the
visible line extends into infinity by way of infra-red in one
direction and of ultra-violet in the other. But mathematics tells
us that at the cosmic periphery the two infinities are the same.
This might be pictured for earthly eyes in the following diagram:

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Purple

( peach -blossom) \

Incarnate

Ultra-violet

The Cosmic Colour-circle

The visible spectrum - laid out on the flat - would if extended to left and right
beyond the infra-red and the ultra-violet, stretch away to infinity. But the
infinity to the left is the same as the infinity to the right; in the closed circle of
the diagram it lies opposite earthly green as the place of the ‘incarnate*.

Here, as we see, purple lies across the circle from the green.

Now the question is how to bring this celestial purple within
earthly testing range. In this cosmic sphere everything that holds
true under earth conditions loses validity; things arc reversed.
On earth, space is filled with something; its reverse is the vacuum.
Perhaps a vacuum between the walls of our double sphere, where
we had put solutions of alum, iodine and acsculin, would create
the right kind of experimental Held for the exclusion of formative
radiation.

We should emphasize that the experiments described here
were concerned with living forces that arc not active only in
organisms. We wanted to determine their independent existence
as cosmic forces.

The following consideration throws more light on the relation
of the vacuum to the formative forces. A vacuum is an empty

;■

Fig. ii

Crystallization in a vacuum countered by phosphorus (or cod-livcr-oil).

‘Rickets cured*.

Fig. 12

‘Rachitic picture' in a vacuum which the phosphorus can no longer overcome.
{Crystallization after 12 hours.) The salt in the solution has been brought to the
stage of forming a square and crescent; because of this, no crystalline rays
emerge when the vacuum is released (see fig* 10).

THE VITAMINS

space with the power of suction. But the force that exerts the
suction is the same contractive force, usually called cohesion,
which we must imagine throughout space. What is it that keeps
the terrestrial globe from disintegrating into the surrounding
universe if not the force of suction which we ordinarily call
gravity, but which is as much an expression of cosmic shaping
forces as cohesion is?

In experiments with formative phenomena in the vacuum
sphere, one would expect some sort of interference, if the above
assumption is correct* For just as warmth is devoured by alum,
chemical action by acsculin, and light by the light-thief iodine,
so one might expect formative forces to be swallowed up by a
vacuum* And it was indeed possible to establish the fact that
crystallizing salt, the archetype of formative process, behaves
quite abnormally in the vacuum sphere.

In crystallization studies the usual procedure is to examine how
edges, angles and surfaces are formed in single crystals. But the
relative positions of single forms crystallizing out of a solution
arc also an important aspect* When, for example, a saturated
solution of potassium nitrate is allowed to stand in a crystallization
dish, the needles crystallize in about ten minutes in the form shown
in fig. 9.

The composition here is somewhat chaotic, with no clearly
marked orientation*

But when the crystallizing is done in an experimental field
surrounded by a vacuum, 110 crystallization occurs for quite a
while. Only some hours later do we see small round amorphous
deposits on the bottom of the dish. As time goes by, these little
piles of soft powder form themselves gradually into distinct
squares and crescents* Directly the vacuum is removed and air
pours into the space between the walls of the sphere, crystalline
rays shoot out from these formations (cf* fig. 10).

These formless little piles, apparently the product of a lack of
formative forces, were dubbed Ticket crystals*. This term
simply expresses the fact that an exclusion of cosmic formative
forces calls forth abnormalities of form which, when the same
thing occurs in human organisms, cause rickets*

If this assumption is correct, however, the addition of sub-

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE
stances known to contain Vitamin Dt such as phosphorus and
cod-liver oil, might be supposed to reverse this abnormal ten¬
dency. Experiments along these lines were unsuccessful so long
as cod-liver oil or phosphorus was added directly to the salt
solution. It was only when resort was taken to the radiating
action of these substances that a ‘healing’ of the rickets crystals
was effected.

In this experiment, a three-walled sphere was substituted for
the double-walled one previously used. The vacuum sphere was
on the outside, as before, while a highly dilute phosphorus
solution filled the adjacent inner space.

In this set-up, the potassium nitrate solution took less than ten
minutes to make the fully formed and ordered pictures of ‘healed*
rickets shown in fig. n.

When the experiment was repeated with the same phosphorus
solution, more and more time was required for crystallization to
take place, and the crystallization picture grew progressively
more chaotic. This meant that the phosphorus was gradually
being exhausted. When it came to the seventh experiment and
after a wait of several hours, there was still no sign of crystallizing.
Everything (including the vacuum) was left standing overnight.
The next morning there were again little squares and crescents
of powdery sediment (cf. fig. 12).

The vacuum sphere, then, has the power to prevent the order¬
ing, formative forces of the cosmos from structuring true crystals.
But one has to picture a certain minimal irradiation of the salt
solution. It is too weak to bring about a true crystallizing, but is
just able to form squares and crescents in the soft powdery mass
of sediment. These forms struck me as rather like visiting cards,
so to speak, which the cosmic formative forces were delivering
through the slit in a locked door.

The square is the simplest possible expression of purely mineral
formative forces. The three-dimensional cross in space is repre¬
sented in its purest form by the cube. Where in the plant kingdom
one finds this formative force most strongly active, a cross-
section of the stem reveals a square patterning. The labiates, which
do not breathe out their fragrance, but conserve it in an aromatic
stem and foliage, are an example. In the case of plants such as

THE VITAMINS

marsh marigold and coltsfoot, which incline especially to the
watery element in their make-up, the edges of the leaves have
crescent-shaped indentations. The half-moon form is the basic
shape created by the ordering force of chemical activity present
in the fluid clement.

The exclusion of cosmic formative forces thus called forth an
abnormal process comparable to that which produces rickets in
the human organism. This process was reversed when substances
known to contain Vitamin D were added and took effect. This
completes the proof that Vitamin D is not a chemical compound
that can be synthetically produced, but a primary cosmic forma¬
tive force.

Control -

Alum sphere - - Iodine sphere -

Aesculin sphere - Vacuum sphere ■— ■■ .... ■

Fig, 13

Yeast fermentation {producing carbonic acid) in spheres of alum, iodine,
aesculin and vacuum - i.e. with Warmth, Light, Chemical action and formative
forces excluded in turn.

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Fig- 15

Dwarf yeast in the alum
sphere, with exclusion of
cosmic warmth-radiation.

Suitable subjects were similarly studied inside spheres of alum,
iodine and acsculin. Yeast proved to be very good for this
purpose. It is an organism with an easily observable life-process.
It breaks sugars down into alcohol and carbonic acid. The car¬
bonic acid can be measured, and thus yields information about
the life-processes in the yeast Fig, 13 shows the rate of carbonic
acid formation in yeast subjected to the radiation of the various
spheres for equal time periods.

Yeast grown inside the alum and iodine spheres, and so without
cosmic warmth and light respectively, produces a greater car-

THE VITAMINS

Fig. 1 6

Scorbutic yeast in the iodine-
sphere, with light-radiation
excluded*

Fig. 17

BerTbcri-yeast in the aesculin
sphere, with chemical radia¬
tion excluded.

bonic acid development compared with a control in which only
water was used to fill the sphere. Yeast grown inside aesculin
and vacuum spheres, and so without cosmic chemical action and
formative forces respectively, shows a greatly reduced production
of carbonic acid. But this large deviation from the control curve
can be annulled by adding substances known to contain Vitamins
A, B and C*

In the first case, an emulsion of butter was used; a drop of it
was added to the ferment* An extract of spinach was mixed with
the abnormally developing yeast inside the iodine sphere, A drop

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

of rice-bran extract in the acsculin sphere reversed the abnormal
development there. The abnormal carbonic acid curve resulting
from the use of the vacuum sphere could be normalized only by
radiating the energy of Vitamin D carriers through the vacuum
into the yeast.

Microscopic pictures of the yeast show even more clearly than
the graph the kind of abnormality that results from excluding one
or other of the cosmic energies. Fig. 14 gives a microscopic view
of normally developed yeast.

Fig. 15 shows the dwarfing that came about in the alum sphere,
where cosmic warmth was excluded. But a glance at the graph
(cf. fig. 13) shows that an abnormally active production of

Fig. 18

Rickets yeast in the vacuum-
sphere, with cosmic forma¬
tive forces excluded.

carbonic acid went on there. This gives an accurate picturing of
the deficiency disease caused by a lack of Vitamin A.

When cosmic light was excluded by the iodine sphere, the
organisms that developed looked squeezed out and hollow at the
centre: dry, wilted forms which exuded a slimy substance into
the developing fluid. When this fluid was analysed, it was also
found to contain an abnormal amount of acid. All this adds up to
a picture of scurvy. (Fig. 16).

Fig. 17 shows yeast grown in the aesculin sphere, which ex¬
cluded cosmic chemical action. The cells here are relatively large,
but have weak contours and lack interior structure. Where they
touch, their edges flatten out, giving the impression of a con-

100

THE VITAMINS

glomerate much like honeycomb. Through the microscope one
secs cells bursting apart or dissolving into the surrounding liquid.
As the graph shows, carbonic acid development is strongly in¬
hibited. The whole picture is one of autolytic disintegration, just
the condition found in beri-beri.

In the vacuum sphere, where cosmic formative forces are ex¬
cluded, we find huge distended, globular organisms (cf. fig. 18).
There was no trace of nuclei, and here again we observe a soft,
amorphous honeycomb-conglomerate. Carbonic acid develop¬
ment is extremely sluggish. In some experiments it came almost
to a dead stop (cf. fig. 13). This is a picture typical of rickets.

These morbid forms, produced by excluding the four cosmic
nature-forces, were rectified in every case by adding or otherwise
activating the corresponding vitamin-carrying substance.

This completes the characterization of these four universal
forces and supports the view advanced here about the nature of
vitamins. It was mentioned above, that nowadays many more
vitamins have been found in addition to the classical A, B, C, D.
Indeed, in future, there must be found as many vitamins to exist
as living organisms in plant and animal. Hence, these four uni¬
versal forces are active and interweaving in every living organism,
revealing more of one or the other side of their activity. It will
not be easy to distinguish their nature all the time, but approxi¬
mately the relationships to the great Four will be found.

The experiments that gave these unmistakably clear results
were carried out by the author in the summer of 1929, in colla¬
boration with G. Suchantke, of Berlin. Later experiments, carried
out elsewhere, in 1931 and 1932, gave less striking results, but the
first results were statistically confirmed. Experiments of this kind
are influenced by even slightly changed circumstances which do
not ordinarily have to be considered, such as whether they are
done in a basement or on a higher floor. A further extensive series
of experiments is needed, to throw fresh light on all the problems
that arise in this work.

101

CHAPTER. SIXTEEN

Coal Tar Chemistry - Realm of Mirror-images

We described in earlier chapters how richly varied a spect¬
rum of substances develops out of the virgin substance,
starch, during the plant's growth and flowering, while root-
ward contraction hardens the starch into structural cellulose. This
woody substance is the lasting element in plants. Roots, together
with everything in the root zone, have largely emancipated
themselves from the rhythm of the seasons* Leaves and blos¬
soms wither and decay, but the root goes on living through
the winter and enables new life to sprout forth in spring. But
even when the whole plant dies, its cellulose components main¬
tain a mummified existence- Certain meteorological and geo¬
logical conditions favour this mummification process, as we sec
in the resultant layers and deposits of coal and lignite, formed in
long past ages of the earth.

Coal, which formed in very ancient times, is older than lignite-
The vegetation that became coal cannot, of course, be compared
in appearance to plants of the present. And wre will leave aside
the further question as to whether ancient vegetation was of as
dense and hard a substance as that found in the plant kingdom
of today.

Now when coal is coked - i.e. heated in an air-tight oven
instead of being burnt - it smoulders, and a certain amount of
gas escapes, the amount depending on the type of coal. Illumin¬
ating gas was produced by this process, first in England over a
century ago, and then everywhere on the Continent. This gas
is a compound of hydrogen and various hydrocarbons: methane,
ethane, ethylene, acetylene, and other such.

Coke is the by-product of gas manufacture. It is used not only
as domestic fuel but for smelting iron ore; it is essential for the
making of steel.

A by-product of the coke and gas industry is coal tar. At first
it was just a nuisance, until ways of making use of this or that
component were hit upon. Now coal tar has become the main¬
stay of the modern chemical industry.

102

COAL TAR CHEMISTRY - REALM OF MIRROR- IMAGES

Fractional distillation of tar produces not only certain solids,
but also distillates ranging from components with a low boiling
point (light oils) to medium-heavy and heavy oils. Their chemical
composition varies with the type of coal used.

Paraffin is the chief product of lignite tar, whereas coal tar is
composed almost wholly of cyclo-paraffins. This is a chemical
distinction essential to a full understanding of what follows, so
it requires some explanation. Both groups are chemically in¬
active. This quality accounts for their title, for paraffin comes
from ‘parum affmis’ - without affinity. And these substances are
truly so dead as to resist even the strongest reagents. They undergo
no change at all, even when boiled with an acid as strong as
concentrated sulphuric acid.

Chemical analysis shows their components to be carbon and
hydrogen - i.e. hydrocarbons. The structure of these hydro¬
carbons varies, however, according to whether they are derived
from lignite or from coal. We pointed out above how carbon’s
prodigious capacity to create form appears in the fact that carbon
with its valency of four, can combine with itself. This makes a
huge number of combinations possible. The paraffins arc hydro¬
carbons with a so-called open chain structure, while the cyclo¬
paraffins arc cyclic hydrocarbons, with a hexagonal ring structure.

•»
m

- c —

- C —

- c —

Open Chain of
Paraffins

These structural differences between paraffins and cyclo-
paraffins determine their further value for chemical purposes, as
will be seen below. Meanwhile, we append a diagram which
docs not pretend to be complete but gives an approximation of
the various distillation products.

Mineral oils (raw petroleum) have a composition similar to

103

\ C /

/ V \

Cyclic Structure
of Cyclo-paraffins

COAL TAR CHEMISTRY - REALM OF MIRROR-IMAGES

that oflignite tar. Here too, fractional distillation yields products
of the paraffin group: benzine, petroleum, paraffin oil and
paraffin. Raw petroleum could be called a natural tar that may
have been formed when some great catastrophe of our whole
planet kept carbonized plant remains smouldering on.

Lignite tar began to be used relatively early in motor fuels,
lubricants and paraffin, thus becoming a chief contributor to the
rapid advance of industrial technology. Until well into the middle
of the nineteenth century, coal tar was a most unwelcome by¬
product of gas and coke factories, laying waste the surrounding
countryside. It was 1846 before the bactericidal, life-destroying
properties of coal tar were recognized and it was put to use as a
preservative, first of railway sleepers, and then of wood for every
use.

The reason for the neglect of coal tar was its resistance to
chemical and oxidizing agents. Coal tar derivatives do not burn
as easily as lignite tar products, and thus cannot be used to fuel
internal combustion engines. Moreover they arc not viscous like
paraffin, and hence cannot be made into lubricants.

This deadlock was broken with the discovery that a com¬
bination of sulphuric and nitric acids could break down the
cyclo-paraffins. Treatment of benzine with this mixture yields
nitro-benzine, sometimes called false oil of bitter almonds. This
very aromatic substance is used to scent floor wax, shoe polish
and the like. This may be why the wide field of cyclo-paraffin
chemistry is called ‘aromatic chemistry’. Open-chain chemistry,
on the other hand, is called ‘aliphatic chemistry’ because careful
oxidation can convert these products into substances with
properties resembling those of the fatty acids (aliphatic = fatty).

N 0*

The nitrification of benzine was a revolutionary advance. The
chemical industry grew to giant size. Today the number of
synthetic derivatives must be reckoned in millions.

Aniline is produced by treating nitro-benzine with hydrogen:

T05

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

N 0.

Nitro benzol

N Hi

Ami in e

The use of very complicated processes to achieve the fixation
of nitrogen led to the first synthetic coal tar dyes:

Aniline P iazobc nzol A min oazobenzol

(a inline-yellow)

Perkin put die first aniline dye on the market in 1856* Baeyer
succeeded in making a synthetic indigo that could be factory-
produced- This was soon followed by the indanthren dyes and
the whole range of other dyes now commercially available*

It took tremendous effort and incredibly acute minds to achieve
this impressive technical progress. Great sclf-sacrificc and strokes
of destiny marked the paths of the scientists responsible for it. It
is very moving to follow the iife-story of Range, for example.
Despite great personal difficulties he kept working on the coal tar
problem, until - in 1834 ~ he succeeded in getting a blue reaction-
product by treating certain coal tar distillates with calcium
chlorite. But it took two more decades for the ingenuity of
Hofmann and others to discover how to make technical use of
Runge’s findings.

Between 1858 and 1865, Kekule founded modem structural
chemistry, thus making a significant contribution to research in
the field of the new dyes. The following incident illustrates the
part destiny played here: Kekule fell asleep while riding on the
upper deck of a London bus and missed his stop. This was com¬
pensated for by a dream in which carbon atoms joined bands
and danced around him in a circle* This dream inspired the
creation of his structural chemistry*

It was soon discovered that substances of this group, produced
at intermediate stages of dye manufacture, react on the human

to6

COAL TAR CHEMISTRY - REALM OF MIRROR-IMAGES
organism. This ushered in the era of synthetic drugs. Salicylic
preparations such as aspirin were produced from phenol.

. O.c O CH*

COOH

Phenol Salicylic acid Aceto-salicylic acid

(aspirin)

This was the start of chemical therapy, which sought to
exploit the discoveries of the dye chemists. Just as dye colours
can be changed and even determined in advance by adding side
chains to the benzine nucleus, chemical therapy starts with a
nucleus able to react on the living plasma and varies the effect
by adding side chains. This was how Salvarsan originated. Its
scientific name and formula are as follows:

CT-CT-

COOH

As - — As

Para - dioxy - tneta - diamine - arseno - benzol - hydrochloride

There were sweet-tasting substances as well among these inter¬
mediate products of dye manufacture* The sweetest were at
once synthesized and put into systematic production. Such was
the origin of saccharine, dulcin, and other such sweeteners.

G 0

Dulcin Saccharine

Nitro-benzol, the primary substance of this whole develop¬
ment, is aromatic in character* Here too, ingenious synthesizing
yielded an abundance of other artificial scents. This led to the
development of the whole synthetic perfume industry with its

107

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

immense variety of compounds, each imitating a different plant
fragrance.

No one can dispute that this expansion of coal tar chemistry
is a triumph of the human mind. But what spirituality was

Seem

Healing substances
/ Colour

\ f /

Sugar

Starch

Cellulose
Coal (Tar)

Mineral oil

\ ,

\ Coa I- 1 ar colours

Synthetic rnedrea merits

Synthetic perfume

Fig, 19

The sub-earthly spectrum of substances as a mirror-image of natural substances.

behind it, and how arc these substances related to the cosmic
whole?

Let us recall how the natural substances born of starch come
into being. We saw how starchy matter is etherealized in the ex¬
haling of the cosmic breath and changes into sugars, blossom
colours, scents, honey, cthcric oils and therapeutic substances of
plant origin. Downwards from the middle zone of starch there
is a gradual densifying and mineralizing, via cellulose, until a
biological zero is reached in carbon, or coal tar. Here human

io8

COAL TAR CHEMISTRY - REALM OF MIRROR- IMAGES

ingenuity takes hold and conjures forth a synthetic mirror-image
of the natural world: synthetic colours, scents, saccharine and
other sweeteners, mineral oils and therapeutic substances.

Contrasting the two realms, we get the impression that the
upper one is the realm of dynamic biological reality, the scene of
a ceaseless harmonization of the living polarities of earth and
heaven, giving rise to an endless range of metamorphoses. The
underworld of coal tar chemistry, on the other hand, seems -
figuratively speaking - like a ghostly reflection of the dynamic
creativity of the cosmos. Here, however, the static world of
atoms and calculable happenings takes the place of dynamics.
Despite the calculable certainties found in this sub-earthly realm,
it cannot seem more real to us than that of the greening, flower¬
ing and fruiting plants.

109

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

High Dilutions and Their Effectiveness

hen a substance such as table salt is dissolved in water, its

VV physical shape disappears completely. It is no longer
either visible or tangible. The tongue is the only sense-organ
still able to perceive it, as a taste. What has happened to the
substance? Is it still there, and if so, in what form?

We say that salt is ‘in solution’. We can taste it and demonstrate
its presence chemically by combining it with a silver nitrate
solution. This precipitates a thick white cheese-like substance,
silver chloride, proving that a chlorine reagent was present in the
salt of the original solution. A reaction has occurred in the watery
fluid, causing a precipitation of silver chloride, a visible indication
of the presence of the invisible table-salt.

NaCl + AgNo3 AgCl + NaN03
Table salt Silver Silver chloride Sodium nitrate
(Sodium chloride) nitrate (precipitates) (remains in solution)

But what form does the dissolved salt take?

When a salt solution and pure water have been allowed to
stand awhile in a cylinder where they arc kept separate by a
specially prepared piece of parchment, an upward bulge appears,
caused by what seems to be strong pressure from below.

This phenomenon is called osmotic pressure. The prepared
parchment forms a semi-pcrmeablc wall which lets water
through but keeps out other substances. Research shows that
the pressure depends on the concentration of dissolved matter,
and, further, that this matter behaves like a gas. Thus osmotic
pressure can be equated with the pressure of gas shut up in a
container.

With ever greater dilution, the dissolved substance keeps on
expanding like a gas, finally becoming so dilute that it cannot be
detected either by taste or by chemical reaction. Even the subtlest
means of chemical detection, such as can determine the presence
of substances in comparatively high dilution, gradually fail.
Even the very sensitive method of spectral analysis has its limits.

HIGH DILUTIONS AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS

With a dilution of i:io17 a point is reached where, from the
standpoint of present conceptions of the size of atoms, one would
have to say that not a single molecule of salt can still be found in
i/iooo ml. of the solution. (According to Loschmitt, i/iooo ml.
of gas contains 4 5 x 10 16 molecules.) This is the same as
dissolving 1 mg. of table salt in ten million tons of water. With
further dilution, even a larger amount of the solution will not,
theoretically speaking, contain any salt molecules at all. It is
therefore hard for chemists and physicians with a modern scien¬
tific training to put any faith in the effectiveness of high dilutions.

Nevertheless, a steadily developing homoeopathy has been
demonstrating for more than a century that these and even
higher dilutions have therapeutic effects.

Hahnemann was the first to make therapeutic use of high
dilutions. His method still governs the preparation of drugs used
in modern homoeopathic practice. Dilutions made by Hahne¬
mann’s method are called potencies. They are prepared in the
following way:

A gramme of some substance, copper sulphate for example, is
dissolved in nine grammes of water, making ten grammes of a
10% copper sulphate solution. The solution is then rhythmically
shaken for a few minutes. This is called the first potency. Recent
research has discovered the optimal length of shaking time as
well as the most effective shaking rhythm.

Now 1 ccm. of the solution thus obtained is again diluted with
water to make 10 ccm. and again rhythmically shaken. The
resulting fluid is the second potency. Again, 1 ccm. of this is
mixed with nine parts of water and shaken. So we arrive at the
third potency.

Since we arc dealing here with dilutions of one in ten, pharma¬
cology calls them decimal potencies, abbreviating the term to ‘D’
with the number of the potency attached. Thus D3 indicates (in
German usage) the third potency. At this point the original
substance has reached a dilution of io-3.

From the modern chemist’s standpoint the so-called third
potency is, of course, just a watery 01% copper sulphate solu¬
tion. In his view it would be simpler to make it by dissolving one
gramme of copper sulphate in a litre of water.

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

But the fact is that a D j copper sulphate potency is not the same
thing as a simple 0‘ i % solution* Tins can be proved experiment¬
ally. Biological tests were carried out on seedlings growing side
by side in potentized and non-potemized equal dilutions
(Kolisko). The spread of leaves and roots in the two categories is
quite different, and repeated testing always confirmed the differ¬
ence* A new force is at work in potentized substances, a force
aroused by rhythm. With increasing dilution the substance dis¬
appears, first physically, then chemically and spectroscopically,
while biological activity is increasingly enhanced.

If we leave aside the contemporary concept of substance, bound
up with the idea that matter is everlasting, and take instead the
new dynamic concept set forth here, the problem of high dilu¬
tions is immediately clarified* As we have shown above, matter
is a crystallization of macrocosmic processes* What we call
substance on earth is cosmic process in a fixed, rigid form.
Earthly materiality and cosmic being are the two poles between
which nature unfolds her myriad manifestations. The plant is
placed in the midst of this polarity, a living member of the
world organism, subject to countless metamorphoses of form
and substance, involved in rhythms of contraction and expansion,
involution and evolution, being and appearance.

Our experiments have shown how matter appears and dis¬
appears in cosmic rhythms* Graphs traced the constant oscillation
between material condensation and cthcrealization into an im¬
ponderable state of being (efi figs, i, 2, 3 and 5). Goethe described
this rhythmic process in relation to the plant. We can extend his
concept to include all substances* In every case, a being, a macro-
cosmic idea, is rhythmically metamorphosed into what we call
matter. And these fixed stages of substantiality can again be
rhythmically brought back to the original form of essential
process, like plants withering at the approach of autumn and
withdrawing almost wholly from the physical scene as their
essential being returns to the wide reaches of the universe.

The potentizing method is an inspired emulation of this
natural process. It is simply a conversion of matter from appear¬
ance to being; the substantial is etherealized by rhythmical
dilution. Physical shape disappears as the substance changes from

112

HIGH DILUTIONS AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS

a solid to a liquid, then to a gas, and finally passes over into a
still more refined, non-material condi tion.

Homoeopathy aims at healing effects achieved not by resort to
matter in a crude, fixed state, but by the release of what we might
call the free, active spirit of each given substance.

It seems that Hahnemann indicated the ten-rhythm used in
potentizing. This has continued to govern practice ever since,
as no new creative ideas have appeared to change the satisfactory
old-established ways and because the ten-rhythm is not at odds
with the decimal system everywhere in use. But wc may reason¬
ably assume that every substance has its own individual rhythm.
A clue to such rhythms may be found in the relation of a sub¬
stance to the formative forces, expressed in crystallization and
other patternings, or to hydrogen, as shown in the figures for
relative atomic weight (compare these with the musical qualities
of the various substances). Or we can note that a plant ~ mistletoe,
for example - is strikingly dichotomous. This might point to
using a two-rhythm in its therapeutic potentizing. Such a
rhythm has been in clinical use for years in the case of mistletoe,
and has proved very effective.

It remains for research in the coining decades to make some
discoveries at present undreamt of in this field. The first step is
to undertake a study of what arc called potency curves.

The experimental method consists in planting wheat grain in
thirty flower pots, watering each pot with one of a continuous
series of potencies of a given substance, and letting the grains
germinate and grow. After a few weeks the seedlings are mea¬
sured, and the average height reached with each potency is
calculated and entered on the vertical arm of the graph (Kolisko
method).

These potency curves show a constant characteristic for each
substance tested. In the author's laboratory the potency curves
for a large number of mineral and vegetable substances have
been established.

One change was made in the experimental method, however,
in that yeast was substituted for the wheat seedlings. Yeast is
known to break sugar down into alcohol and carbonic acid. The
latter can be collected in a graduated tube for measuring. The

1 13

Fig. 20

Potency curve of Prunus spinosa (sloe-blossom).

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

*3
12
1 I

ml.

10 —
D 0

-t-

15 20 25

Distilled water
as a control

“h

Fig, 2i

Potency curves of natural and synthetic benzoic acid.

HIGH DILUTIONS AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

volume of carbonic acid is as accurate an indicator of the life-
intensity of the yeast as were the measurements of leaf and root
growth in the case of the seedlings.

The complete apparatus consists of thirty to fifty fermentation
flasks, placed in the order of potencies on a round, revolving
table. Before each test, a control experiment is run with dis¬
tilled water. If the same amount of water and yeast are used in
each flask, the same volume of carbonic acid can be expected to
develop in each, with a straight graph as the result. But when
the various potencies of a given substance are used instead of
distilled water, we get a characteristic curve with clearly marked
maxima and minima in place of the straight line. Fig. 20 shows
such a curve, obtained with Primus spinosa*

We have to ask what the dips and rises, the minima and
maxima of these curves, really indicate, and whether conclusions
as to the rhythm of a particular substance can be read from the
intervals between them. And does the curve give any clue to
therapeutic use and dosage?

It may take years of diligent research to answer these questions.
For the time being we can perhaps say only that the maxima and
minima are turning-points, a crossing of thresholds between
two realms. Wc can picture a series of thresholds to be crossed
with increasingly high potencies as a substance is brought from
one stage of existence to another. The threshold-points (the
maxima and minima of a particular curve) may express this
ascent of a substance through various phases.

In the course of the author’s experimenting, benzoic acid was
tested and its potency curve determined. This substance was
derived from benzoic resins and purified by being crystallized
until the purity standard was reached at the melting point of
i2i°C. The potency curve was lively, with characteristic maxima
and minima.

A sample of benzoic acid was bought at the same time from
the pharmacy and a potency curve test was run. This sample was
a pure but synthetic coal tar product. Though it was chemically
indistinguishable from natural benzoic acid, it belonged to the
mirror-realm of coal tar chemistry.

The potency curve of this synthetic substance did indeed turn

tt6

HIGH DILUTIONS AND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS

out to be a straight line (cf. fig. 21). This means that its higher
potentizations had no influence on the yeast culture. Only where
there was still some material trace of the substance (up to about
the fourth potency}, was any effect observable. We may conclude
that synthetics of coal tar origin are effective only in allopathic
dosage; in homoeopathic dilutions they are useless.

Coal tar derivatives cannot, in our terms, be etherealized to the
'being5 stage by a rhythmical potentizing process* They have
forfeited all relationship to cosmic and terrestrial rhythms and
do not respond to a rhythmic challenge* Thus it is fair to say that
a basic biological difference exists between natural and synthetic
products, despite their chemical identity; the benzoic acid experi¬
ments cited show this.

The two benzoic acids are offspring of two realms, shown in
the substance spectrum of the preceding chapter. These realms
arc governed by different types of laws. The living plant belongs
with its whole spectrum of substances to the realm governed by
the laws of life: the overarching principles of polarity, intensi¬
fication and metamorphosis discovered by Goethe are operative
there. In the second realm the laws of physical atomic and
molecular chemistry prevail* In one case we are dealing with
organisms, in the other with mechanisms. Hence the law of the
conservation of matter is entirely valid in the mechanical realm,
but not in the organic*

In daily life we are surrounded by the products of tar chemistry
and must form some conception of what we arc dealing with.
Nothing that has been said here is meant as a disparagement. But
we need to recognize what forces are involved in this current
phase of evolution as we work towards a future understanding of
living substances.

117

CHAPTER. EIGHTEEN

Minerals

When plants are burned, they leave mineral residues in the
form of ash. The amount of ash varies considerably with
the species and with growing conditions, and the ashy compon¬
ents vary too from plant to plant. Potassium, phosphorus, calcium,
silica, magnesia and sulphur are almost always predominant.
Small amounts of aluminium, sodium and chlorine are also usu¬
ally present. Some plants contain rarer elements; there is lithium
in tobacco, iodine in seaweed and lichen, titanium in roses.

Nowadays, people tend to think of these minerals as essential
nutrients taken up out of the soil by plants. If that were true,
crops would gradually deplete the soil of these elements except
where it can replace them of itself. This would require adding
minerals to keep land in production. And just such a view gained
acceptance toward the end of the last century as a result of the
great triumphs of natural science, and of chemistry in particular.
It found support in Liebig's balance-sheet of plant growth. He
is the father of artificial fertilizers.

Though the theory is logical enough, doubts as to its validity
arise on closer study of the principle of artificial fertilization.

At first, mineral fertilization certainly increases yield. But
already today, after only a few decades' use of artificial fertilizers,
there is room for very grave misgivings - and a few decades are
just a moment in the long evolution of our cultivated soils. We
must take into account what happens to the quality and health
of plants so forced, and weigh their vulnerability to the ever-
increasing numbers and species of pests and parasites. Indeed, the
pesticide industry has grown in exact proportion to the increasing
use of commercial fertilizers. This kind of agriculture grows out
of quite other roots than that older form of husbandry which
provided wholesome food in the past and can continue to do so
in the future.

The mechanical balancing of plant nutrients must be recog¬
nized as wholly foreign to the organic nature of the plant. The
fact that tilandsia grows on telegraph wires without any contact

118

MINERALS

with the soil, or that tobacco plants contain lithium even when
grown on land completely lacking in it, would seem to indicate
that a plant's mineral content is not the result simply of absorbing
soil minerals but of other processes that have cither gone un¬
recognized or have been ignored.

Von Herzccle’s experiments and those of the author, mentioned
in preceding chapters, show the invalidity of the mineral-balance
theory applied to the organic kingdoms. Life overrides the law
of the conservation of matter. We showed how matter is macro-
cosmic process in fixed earthly form. Is it so surprising that
‘heavenly forces pass their golden vessels back and forth", as
Goethe put it, changing the nature of their materiality in ac¬
cordance with the stage passed through in rising to the condition
of immaterial force, or again descending from macrocosmic being
into solid matter that can be weighed and analysed? Is it not
perfectly comprehensible that mineral substances should emerge
in plants, generated out of the cosmic whole that formed them
and of which they are a part, and that we should find these
minerals afterwards in analysed remains of plants or as part of the
earth where the plants once lived? The earth does not manu¬
facture plants by some physico-chemical process: it is the plant
that creates the soil by coming into material manifestation out
of the universe (Herzcclc), For the plant, earth forces arc only one
pole, the pole that enables it to make a material appearance.

Plant physiologists and farmers alike should devote themselves
to a study of the organic connection of these earth-forces with
the forces of the cosmos and put what is learned into enlightened
modern practice.

We may say, then, that the plant produces soil. Not only does
it build up a fertile layer of humus over the underlying rocky
earth in the course of its long creative life-activity; it makes
‘earth" in a much broader sense than would at first appear. We
are accustomed to recognize seams and deposits of coal as remains
of a long-dead vegetation. But living plants can be recognized
as playing an even greater role in the formation of the earth. Of
course, neither the earth nor plants were always as densified as
they are today. Peat moors can serve as reminders of a process
that must have gone on under quite different climatic conditions

ii 9

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

and on a very different scale in earlier times. Primeval plants can
be conceived as first expressing their essential nature in the most
delicate and fleeting use of highly rarefied elements, like colours
in a painting. The material precipitates of these manifestations
grew more and more dcnsificd and became the substances that
formed the earth’s surface. This applies equally to the silica,
alumina and other substances of which mountains are composed.

Something quite similar happened in the animal kingdom.
There arc great mountain areas made of animal remains (mussels,
snails - ammonite chalk). This is easy to understand, just as coal
is. But animals must be pictured as involved in the same develop¬
ment as plants, the substance of present mountains being a
densificd precipitate of their primeval life in a still quite ethereal
element. In this connection we recall what was described above
when we advanced the concept of the pre-existence of spirit:
that life was present in essence before becoming fixed in earthly
forms and solid substances. The beings of nature’s various living
kingdoms only gradually create themselves bodies in the course
of a long densifying process through which they descend into
substance-forming manifestation.

120

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Limestone and Silica

A person travelling eastward to Austria over the Arlbcrg
Pass into the Rosanna and Inn River valleys and looking at
the landscape on both sides of the railway can make some very
interesting observations. On the right is an ascending line of
mountains patched with woods and meadows. Lush pastures
with peacefully grazing herds of cattle stretch right up to the
edges of the glaciers. Here is a realm abundantly supplied with
water, of which the traveller catches constant glimpses in water¬
falls, gorges, and gay little brooks leaping down through the
meadows.

A lover of minerals would find a stay here most rewarding,
for the heights abound in glorious silica rocks and crystals : all the
quartzes, including milk and rose quartz, felspar in every form,
even garnet-like pieces, and mica gleaming in the sun like
polished metah This mountain range is built of a composite rock,
granite; its components, quartz, felspar and mica, are also
present separately. The geologist notes differences of structural
origin in the granite's quality, ranging from the granular to an
almost slatc-likc foliation. He is aware that the rock owes its
form and firm robustness to the quartz in it, while when mica
predominates, it tends to split the rock into separate leaves.
Quartz and mica arc in this sense opposite poles, seemingly
harmonized and held together by the felspar in granite.

Just as granite is made up of three different minerals, felspar
consists of three different chemical elements. It is a kind of
smaller recapitulation of granite’s threefold nature, in a sense its
heart. Felspar is essentially always a combination of silica and
chalky matter (limestone or alkalis) linked by alumina. This can
be represented in a general way as follows:

Granite: Mica - Felspar - Quartz

Ca0,Al203.Si02
Ca lei u m — A1 tim i na — S ill ca

With any luck one can also find silica here in its purest, noblest

T21

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

form; rock-crystal. This stone, with its transparent hexagonal
columns topped by compact pyramids that opalesce under light
in all the colours of the rainbow, is indeed the monarch of these
mountains. Here we see a miniature embodiment of the majesty,
the lofty clarity, of the surrounding giants, suffused with primeval
grandeur to the furthest reaches of their eternal ice, their glittering
snow-fields and peaks reaching up to the heavens. Like them,
rock-crystal seems to extend out into the realm of universal
silence.

The mountains to the south, or on the right of the traveller,
are all built of silica. They stretch from the Verwall and Silvretta
ranges south of the Arlberg to the Oetztalcr, Stubaicr and
Zillcrtalcr Alps and even further eastward. Geology recognizes
siliceous rock as the earth's oldest, and therefore calls it (in
German) ‘primal stone’ . These mountains form part of the
primeval Central Alps. They arc the backbone of the Alpine
massif, extending in a great arc from the Mediterranean to the
Hungarian Plain.

Now let us turn to the left and look at the mountains close by
the Arlberg to the north, the Allgaeuer and Lech taler Alps, and,
a little further on, the Karwcndcl range with its fierce chasms
and ravines. One has to be a rapid observer in order to take in
all the quite different impressions. No trace of lofty clarity
remains. Instead, one is charmed and repeatedly surprised by the
impulsiveness and spontaneity of the scene. The earth tends to
thrust up abruptly in steep and defied walls, sharp peaks and
projections. Only the foothills are clothed in forests, from which
naked cliffs rise directly skyward. This is the homeland of the
nervous chamois, not of the phlegmatically ruminating cow.
The entire range seems caught up in a desiccating process, and
one sees fewer brooks, streams and waterfalls than on the opposite,
siliceous side. The rock here is limestone - porous, absorbent,
eaten away and hollowed out by wind and weather. There are
the dense Karwendcl limestone, shell limestone, ammonite chalk,
and now and then crystalline calcite or marble.

One might call the primeval mountains vegetative, plant-
related, while limestone ranges are skeletal, dried-out, restless
and animal-related. In line with the previous chapter we can

122

LIMESTONE AND SILICA

attribute primeval rock to a vegetative origin, limestone to
animal origin. But we should not picture these plants and animals
as built of substances like those found in species of the present*
They were, rather, precipitates of an ethereal substantiality more
like light, or air, or even fire.

The views to left and right of the train are so strikingly different
that the traveller can hardly escape the challenge they present to
thought and feeling. The majesty of the primeval mountains on
the right makes the same impression as wise lofty thinking, while
the impulsive juttings-up that typify the limestone ranges on the
left seem embodied thrusts of will* Many readers will be able to
call to mind such impressions from their own experience of
similar landscapes. They will have felt the lift in mind and body
given by silica, while a limestone soil, though it stimulates the
will to action, keeps one firmly anchored in the here and now*

In this connection it is interesting to note which metals favour
limestone and silica as matrix. Gold is found in the primeval
ranges of the Gasteiner-Ache, in the Stubai Valley, along with
copper, mercury and iron, while the limestone harbours either
silver or silver-bearing galenite* One comes across many worked-
out silver mines in the Karwendel Mountains*

A reminder that the ‘primeval1 Alps form the backbone of the
great Alpine arc may serve to throw light on the overall lime¬
stone-silica picture. North of this backbone lie the northern
limestone ranges* The valleys of the Inn, the Salzach and the
Enns arc the line of demarcation here* To the south we again find
limestone ranges: the Dolomites, Karawanks, Julian Alps and
Karst. Here, the boundary between primeval rock and southern
limestone is the Drava River.

Many European ranges arc primeval rock, particularly the
Black Forest, the Bohemian Forest, the Sudeten and the Scandi¬
navian mountains. Geologists estimate that 40% to 50% of the
earth’s crust consists of silica, about 30% of limestone. Thus we
may properly call limestone and silica the building stones of
which the earth is made*

Silica has ^Jf affinity to water, as may be seen in the many
water courses of the primeval Alps and in the vegetative forces
already noted. This affinity shows up chemically as well* No

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

other substance forms so many different compounds, distinguish¬
able solely by their water content. Silica is an acid, an anhydride
(silicic arid - Si02), In combination with water it changes into
orthosilicic acid (H4Si04). In between is inctasilicic acid (H2Si03),
But these are simply outstanding types* There arc innumerable
silicic (polysilicie) acids, whose salts (silicates) account for the
tremendous variety of silicate rock. We showed above how
carbon, in the unique ability to combine with itself which its
function as a shaping force confers, creates the vast range of
organic substances. Silica has a similar capacity in the realm of
minerals, where its affinity to water enables it to create the
tremendous variety of compounds composing the various kinds
of rock.

Silica’s affinity to water is actually so marked that solid par¬
ticles of it will mingle with water (physically, not chemically) so
completely as to give the appearance of dissolving in it. This
makes a mixture known as waterglass. It is not, however, a true
solution, such as table salt makes when dissolved in water. For
table salt in solution not only loses its solid crystalline identity:
it permeates the solution as a gas would, and behaves like a gas
in all other respects. But silica in solution is at an in-between
stage; it cannot make up its mind to be either a true solid or a
liquid, or yet a genuine solution. This condition is familiar from
our discussions of starch and protein; it is known as colloidal It
is a labile state that can change in a twinkling, going over into a
solid by way of gelatinous (hydrogel) and flaky stages, or be¬
coming fully liquefied (hydrosol) and turning into a true solution.

It is most interesting and revealing to look at the picture
colloidal chemistry gives of the reversal of structure that takes
place as a hydrosol changes into a hydrogel Solid particles of
silica arc assumed to be suspended in the fluid hydrosol When
this passes over into the gelatinous condition of the hydrogel,
the structure is reversed. Where wc had solid silica particles in
water, we now have liquid-containing hollows in a solid mass
of silica very like a bath-sponge in appearance. Opals, for ex¬
ample, are simply hardened silica jelly.

The colloidal state is characterized chiefly by a considerable
increase in surface tension. Every substance is densest at its

124

LIMESTONE AND SILICA

surface, where it has a sort of skin. That is how surface tension
manifests itself. Thus if a knitting needle is carefully put down
on water it will float there, supported by this ‘skin'. In colloids,
surface tension is enormously increased, since there is not only
the surface formed at the border between air and liquid, but, in
addition, all the numberless surfaces of floating particles of
silica, or of the drops of liquid in the holes that honeycomb the
solid cake. Silica-gel is thus a structure made up of skins and
internal energy. All colloids are in this sense energy carriers. They
have a maximum of reactive surfaces, always the essential factor
in biological processes. As carriers of life, all the fluids in human,
animal and vegetable organs are colloidal.

Silica’s proclivity to the gelatinous state and its even more
pronounced tendency to surface tension give us a clue to the
manner of its natural and cosmic functioning. In hydrogel,
where we see silica in action as a peripheral force working from
outside to bound the hollow spaces, we have a miniature picture
of its most outstanding feature. Everywhere we find it forming
sheaths and enclosures with its surfaces. It is known that skin and
all the surface sense organs that connect us with the world outside
are largely composed of silica, as is the umbilicus. Here we sec
silica again in the role of matrix, transmitting the mother’s life
and formative forces to the embryo.

Even in the mineral kingdom silica exhibits the same activity.
Agate has a spherical structure, while chalcedony looks exactly
like pig-skin. Both minerals are pure silica, and their skin-
forming tendency is clearly apparent. Looking at them, one has
the impression that they got these skins from an outside force
that worked in from the cosmos. Nowhere is this more perfectly
illustrated than in amethyst geodes. Cosmic formative force,
formative light, shapes the skin-like enclosure of these cavities,
inside which, as in a womb, the marvellous crystals come into
being. And amethyst is purest silica.

To understand these matters in their far-reaching implications
we must widen our search beyond physico-chemical limits and
observe silica in the entire range of its activity. It is not just an
earthly substance; it is a macrocosmic force or process that has
shaped the whole earth-globe as a sculptor’s hands create form

125

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

on the surface of some plastic medium- The silica process is a
form-giving process.

Projective geometry provides us with a mathematical illus¬
tration. One can think of the surface of a sphere as having two
possible origins. The usual concept pictures it as an equal ex¬
pansion from a central growth-point. Every point on the circum¬
ference thus has a static connection with the centre. This concept
underlies all our building, the statics of a house, the stability of
the physical universe.

The alternative method of arriving at the surface of a sphere
is just the opposite. Form-creating planes approach the emergent
shape from infinity, becoming tangents of the sphere thus en¬
closed. Such spheres are therefore infinity-created hollow spaces,
not solid bodies. Every point on the surface is linked with in¬
finity, rather than with a centre (fig. 22),

This shaping with the cosmic dynamics of infinity is the silica
process, which manifests in a fixed form as the substance, silica.
It is the force active wherever surfaces come into being: the sur¬
faces of ocean waves and mountains, the epidermis of plants, the
skins of man and animals, the membranes enclosing their internal
organs.

Silica serves as an excellent example for pointing out the
difference between substances as the dead mineral end-products
of a process and that process itself - a distinction we shall have
to learn to make. The silica process is by no means bound to the
substance silica. Only where its activity has been intense, does
material silica come into being. Substances are the final stage of
processes. Future references to ‘substance processes' are to be
understood as meaning the dynamic activity preceding the
emergence of physical matter.

Birds are the creatures most closely related to the silica process.
Material evidence of this is found in their feathers, ashes of which
yield up to 77% silica. The silica process here is not limited to
the feather-enclosed bird form; it is the force which relates birds
to the entire sphere-shaped mantle of air that encloses the earth.
Atmospheric strata arc themselves permeated by the silica process,
for their surfaces were formed by its tangential planes. It is not
just strength of muscle that enables the eagle to spread his wings

1 26

THE FORMING of the CIRCLE :

fcj

from the centre -
stat i c ( lime )

from the circumference
dynamic ( silica)

Fig. 22

Earthly circle and- cosmic circle.

LIMESTONE AND SILICA

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE
and lord it over the heights in majestic flight: it is the profound
relation of his being to the silica process active in the airy realm.
Gliding is a first step in the same direction, a sport in which man
has to develop a special qualitative sense for and sensitivity to
the cosmic laws of atmospheric space. It is a sense that borders
on perception of imponderable reality. An understanding of the
silica process could contribute toward a future mastery of the air,
which is structured throughout of plane-surfaces.

How different a picture limestone gives! Here we find no such
affinity to water as silica possesses, but rather an inclination to
aridity. There is no such thing as colloidal lime. Our path to an
understanding of its nature cannot therefore trace a relationship
to water, as with silica, but rather a connection with dryness.

Now the greatest intensification of which dryness is capable is
combustion. Firing produces what we call burnt lime, but leaves
silica completely unchanged. Lime in its natural state has a
greediness, evident in its tendency to absorb liquids, gases and
odours. Burnt lime carries this characteristic to an extreme. In
the process called slaking, for example, it sucks up water with
such ferocity as to cause hissings, clouds of steam and even ex¬
plosions, so that it has to be very cautiously handled in the lime-
pits. Slaked lime is made by pouring water on to quicklime.
And though one might think this would satisfy its thirst, it goes
on and greedily sucks up more carbonic acid from the air, until
it becomes hardened stone again. That is why lime is an in¬
gredient of the mortar (a mixture of sand and slaked lime) used in
construction work.

Burning: Ca0O3 (lime) -> CaO (burnt lime) + C02
Slaking : CaO (burnt lime) + H20 -* Ca(OH)2 (slaked lime)

Building: Ca(OH)2 (slaked lime)+ C02 -> CaC03 (limestone)

Lime is thus related by its character to the statics of building,
the firmness of our physical frames, the equilibrium and stability
of earthly phenomena.

Fig. 22 pictures the contrast between the dynamics of the
cosmic sphere and the statics of the earthly globe. The latter is
built up from a central point and obeys the laws of terrestrial

128

LIMESTONE AND SILICA

space, while the former is shaped by the peripheral forces of
infinity.

We seldom think of the extent to which as earthly beings wc
are bound up with the balance and stability derived from the
lime-process. Gravity would drag us down into bottomless

Fig- 33

Skin and skeleton as expression of the silica-lime processes,

depths if the earth’s solidity and the statics of buildings were not
there to counteract it and to hold things in balance. And wc can
thank the lime in our bones for the firm support they give to our
bodies, for our balance and our upright posture.

Our skin, then, is that part of us built by the cosmic silica
process, while our skeleton is the expression of the stable earthly
minerality given ns by the lime-process. With our ‘skin and
bones* we are stretched between the two polar cosmic forces,
silica and lime. Silica shapes from the circumference, lime from

129

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

the centre. The dynamic relationship of the two forces is essen¬
tially that of circle and radius.

The silica-lime polarity finds reflection in another fact. From
the chemist's standpoint, silica is an acid, lime a base. Bases cause
precipitation, while acids are dissolving agents (metals and
minerals cannot be dissolved directly by silicic acid, but they can
be by almost every other acid). Precipitation occurs in almost
every case where a base is added, thus actually creating a ‘basis’.
Such is the origin of the solid ground that provides the basis for
our feet, our lives, our work. The acids and bases recognized by
chemistry to be polar opposites are characteristic expressions of
silica and lime, which arc themselves expressions of polar forces
of the universe.

Where in the universe is the origin of these macrocosmic silica
and lime processes? We must seek it, as we have done in other
similar cases, in the realm of fixed stars, the Zodiac.

As we have shown, the silica process shapes life out of the
cosmos as a sculptor’s hands shape clay. But hands are simply
tools for working out ideas that live in the mind of the artist.
Macrocosmic ideas underlying outer forms of life: this is the
heart of the silica process. They are what we might call arche¬
typal images or pictures. Goethe referred to them in Faust as
‘The Mothers’. The sun, which is the mediator of these forces,
transits the constellation of the Ram in April, just that time of
year when nature rises to bring forth a wealth of new forms - in
other words, the season when out of their abundance the arche¬
types arc manifest in physical appearance. Substances more
resistant than clay cannot be smoothed and kneaded into form;
they must be hammered into shape. The ancients expressed this
great process, whereby the world of appearances selflessly receives
the imprint of archetypal patterns from creative heights, in the
symbol of the backward-glancing Ram.

Aries, the Ram (also the Lamb) is a wonderfully profound
image of the cosmic process which gives rise to silica as its last
mineralized stage. As with our earlier picture of the Lion, so
now the activity that proceeds from the Aries region of the
heavens is pictured at every level in the Ram. For one thing, the
ram’s twisted hollow horn-formation is a pure example of the

130

LIMESTONE AND SILICA

characteristic sheath-building, sphere-forming activity of silica.
This spherical tendency can be seen also in the ram’s whole
body-surface, in the wool that covers even its head. This soft,
bright, silky fleece was from time immemorial a symbol of
high cosmic powers, of wisdom that prevails in the realm of
archetypes. All genuine early representations of the Ram show
him looking backwards, emphasizing the way in which the
silica process rays in from universal space.

The autumnal equinox, when the sun is travelling through the
constellation of the Scales, ushers in a season which is just the
opposite of spring. Whereas in spring the atmosphere is vibrant
with the urgency of growth taking shape, by autumn this wave
of materialization has spent itself. An ebbing tide sets in; the
world of archetypal images withdraws. Earth’s static tendency
regains the upper hand. The Scales thus accurately picture the
lime-forces and their point of origin.

As earthly substances, silica and lime arc polar opposites. Their
macrocosmic archetypes arc similarly polar, for the Ram and the
Scales confront each other from opposite sides of the Zodiac.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Aluminium and Phosphorus

Valleys and the basins between mountain ranges delight us
with their luxuriant vegetation. Here wc find still another
type of landscape. Everyone knows the kind of soil native to
such regions - its brownish-yellow clay sticks to one's shoes in
rainy weather and one's feet sink into it. Chemically speaking,
this loam is an aluminium silicate. In its pure form it is known
as potter's earth or china clay. This is the type of soil deposited
in river valleys or in mountain basins. It is a heavy, fertile soil,
such as favours the growth of lush foliage. Geologists call it
alluvial because it is formed by a weathering and washing down
of disintegrated mountain rock. Thus we may call clay a bridge
between ranges. Since it has been found to constitute about 20%
of the earth's crust, it is - like lime and silica - one of the building
materials of which the earth's body is composed.

Lime and silica were shown to be polarities. Alumina seems
designed to bridge the two. We can see this tendency in rock
where clay is present. Felspar is a good example. It plays a
harmonizing role between quartz and mica, a fact apparent in the
chemical formula. According to whether the aluminium in
felspar is combined with calcium, sodium or potassium, it
oscillates between silica and lime compounds:

Felspar:

(type)

CaO

Calcium

ai2o3

Aluminium

oxide

Si°2

Silica

This pendulum-swing between polar opposites becomes even
more evident on considering aluminium's * amphoteric’ nature.
This means that it can be both an acid, like silica, and a base,
like lime. Taking one of the commonest forms ot aluminium,
alum, or aluminium sulphate, we find that in this compound
aluminium acts as a base, combined with sulphuric acid. When
alum is dissolved in water to which a stronger base such
as caustic soda is added, aluminium hydroxide is precipitated:

132

ALUMINIUM AND PHOSPHORUS

Al2(S04)3 + 6NaOH^ 2Al(OH)3 + 3Na2SO,

Alum Aluminium hydroxide

An overdose of caustic soda, however, has the surprising effect
of re-dissolving the aluminium hydroxide precipitate. In the
presence of this stronger base, aluminium makes a right-about-
face and acts like an acid in combining with the caustic soda to
form a soluble salt, sodium alumina tc. Here the part played by
aluminium complements the part it played in alum:

Al(OH)3 + 3NaOH Na3Al03 +H20
Aluminium hydroxide Sodium alumina te

If a stronger acid, such as sulphuric acid, is now carefully
mixed with the sodium aluminate, this will cause aluminium to
return to its base condition and separate out again as aluminium
hydroxide:

aNa3A103 + 3H2S04-> 2Al(OH)3 +aNa2S04
Sodium Aluminium

aluminate hydroxide

A slight superfluity ol sulphuric acid again dissolves the
aluminium hydroxide, producing the readily soluble alum, or
aluminium sulphate. In this salt we find aluminium completely
restored to its original condition as a base :

2Al(OH)3 + 3H2S04 Al2(S04)3 + 6H20

Aluminium hydroxide Alum

So aluminium oscillates continually between the poles of base
and acid, linking them in a constantly recreated balance.

We even find the plant* s two poles, root and blossom, brought
into harmony by the aluminium element. It is not, however, the
substance aluminium, but the aluminium process that carries the
earth forces upwards from the root, and the sun and stellar forces
of the blossom region downwards to the root. Aluminium’s
material presence in the soil stimulates the plant to this activity.
Silica is responsible for colour, scent and finely articulated form,
while lime sees to the material filling-out of vegetation from
below. Aluminium keeps these earthly and heavenly forces in a
living balance. That is why we called luxuriance of foliage, the

133

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

green middle zone of the plant kingdom, a sure indication of a
clayey soil.

Clay is plastic and responsive to formative forces working on
it from outside. Just as a musical instrument responds to a musician
so plastic clay is the instrument for the music of forms composed
by a sculptor.

It is the aluminium process that makes earth receptive to the
cosmic shaping forces of the silica process which the great artist,
Nature, draws from the cosmic periphery. Silica's affinity to
water appears again here in relationship to day, for it is only
when clay is properly moist that it is sufficiently plastic to be
receptive to the shaping activity of silica.

But the formed day becomes static in the drying process, while
firing makes it almost indistinguishable from lime. Pieces of
sculpture, pottery and bricks arc all rendered hard, dry and
porous in the kiln (pottery is given a skin of silica in the process
called glazing). The lime in mortar holds together the bricks in
the house-walls which shelter and support our physical life.
Again we see aluminium-bearing clay as the balancing agent
between silica and lime.

Of course, there are latent polarities in clay. In itself it is the
least aristocratic substance; the forms built of it are the most
transitory. This is expressed in the Biblical picture of man's
transitory physical body formed of clay. Wc might say, borrow¬
ing this picture, that man is built from head to toe out of such a
balancing of heavenly and earthly forces as clay affords. But
this 'clay' undergoes a stage by stage upward purifying as man
refines it in his various organs, reaching a peak in the eye's
transparency; here dark earthly matter has been raised to a level
where it becomes permeable by the light of spirit.

Clay thus serves also as a gemstone matrix. Gems are the
highest stage of mineral matter, perfect expressions of the
harmonious interplay of lime and silica, of earthly anchoring and
cosmic shaping. Almost every kind of precious stone is made of
aluminium oxide or of a compound of aluminium. The family of
cor Linds, rubies, sapphires, consists of pure aluminium oxide.
Other gems, such as tourmalines, emeralds, topazes, zircons,
contain aluminium compounds.

134

ALUMINIUM AND PHOSPHORUS

In precious stones, aluminium lends itself wholly to silica’s
cosmic shaping forces ; in brick it is given off both to dry, static
earthly force of lime.

Silica Lime

moist « - Aluminium - ► dry

Gemstones oxide Brick

Putting a ruby, with its brilliant red, beside a soft blue sapphire
brings home the fact that jewels arc a synthesis of polarities at the
very highest level of which matter is capable.

There is a wonderful gemstone that combines two polar colours
in each single crystal. This is the tourmaline, with its comple¬
mentary green and purple.

Turning to man, whose physiology lies between skin and
skeleton, silica and lime, we fmd an clement which as the carrier
of physiological processes moves in ceaseless rhythm between
polar opposites. This is the blood, which streams out to the
periphery of the body and then returns to its innermost core. As
it moves toward the skin and the extremities, blood is red; on
its return journey, blue. The heart is like a jewelled expression
of this active synthesis. Its beating is a rhythmic harmonizing of
these poles.

How understandable it seems in the light of these facts to apply
aluminium (m the form of aluminium acetate or clay poultices)
in treating congestions, inflammations, sprains and bruises.
Felspar (orthoclase), externally applied, also helps to harmonize
heart action.

In contrast to clay, phosphorus (or phosphate rock) is thinly
scattered through the earth’s crust, like spices in a cake, instead
of filling up whole regions, valleys and basins. Rarely are phos¬
phate deposits sufficiently concentrated to make milling them
worth while. This mineral, found chiefly in the form of calcium
phosphate or apatite, is much sought after by manufacturers of
superphosphate, a well-known artificial fertilizer.

But phosphorus is everywhere in minute quantities. Humus
derives it from decaying plants, and plant-ash has it in consider¬
able amounts. Where dead plant-matter piles up in layer on
layer, in swamps or on moorlands, decomposition releases an

135

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE
organic phosphorus compound in the form of will o' the wisp
(phosphcnc, PH3),

If we put a piece of phosphorus on a plate, all sorts of interesting
things can be observed. One is how the piece shines with a
peculiar greenish glow in the dark. At the same time we notice a
strange characteristic odour, exactly like that given off by a
shower of electric sparks. This is caused by the forming of
ozone. Phosphorus has the same capacity as electricity to con¬
dense oxygen in the air into ozone,

3O2 -> 2O3

three volumes oxygen — > two volumes ozone

Finally wc see fumes spiralling around the phosphorus. It does
not look as though they were generated by it, but more as
though they were circling in toward it as a centre, closing in on
it. Suddenly the phosphorus ignites with a brilliant white flash
of spontaneous combustion, making a spurting, hissing sound,
Tfft!\ as it bursts into flame.

Phosphorus, then, shines and pours out light, but is also a
condensing agent. Like aluminium, it embraces two polarities,
both of which are to be found in the human organism. Our
bodies contain a very considerable amount of material phos¬
phorus. Nerves are built of protein high in phosphorus. Indeed,
the nervous system as a whole is as clear a revelation of the
phosphorus process as the circulatory system is of the aluminium
process. Phosphorus flames give light, but are cold. Our nervous
system endows us with the cool, clear light of consciousness; but
it is also the transmitting agent for the formative impulses that
shape the body's plastic organs. This means that without the
nervous system there would be no such thing as shaped, sub¬
stantial human bodies.

The phosphorus process co-operates on the one hand with the
silica in our skin, on the other with lime in our bony structure.
The skin contains innumerable nerve-endings, which convey
impressions of the world around us. Though silica creates skin
surfaces, it is the phosphorus process that gives them surface
sensitivity. It is to phosphorus that we owe awareness of our
bodies and a bodily consciousness of selfhood. The skin, with

136

ALUMINIUM AND PHOSPHORUS

its nerve inclusions, thus forms a boundary between world and
individual.

The cosmic formative forces active in silica arc taken over by
the phosphorus process, which, with the help of the transmitting
nerves, uses them to shape and give firm substantiality to the
internal organs (we may recall the beri-beri syndrome, with its
typical poverty of nerve-transmitted formative forces and its
tendency to tissue dissolution). The dynamic of this densifying
process culminates in the bones, where phosphorus combines
materially with calcium to form calcium phosphate. Thus the
phosphorus process comes to its completion in the density and
statics of the bony structure.

We may say, then, that the poles of skin and skeleton arc
spanned by the phosphorus-nerve process as well as by the
aluminium-circulatory process.

The path travelled by phosphorus from the skin to the bones,
via the nervous system, can be clearly traced in the pathology of
arteriosclerosis. The nerves with their phosphorus content - a
substance known to chemistry as nucleo-protcin and composed
of lecithin and cholesterol - are at an intermediate stage of
calcification. In persons tending to sclerosis, the walls of the
blood-vessels are coated with cholesterol and similar substances.
As the disease progresses, these deposits calcify and bring on
hardening of the arteries.

These facts indicate both the cause of sclerosis and the means
of preventing it. The cause lies in a one-sided development of
the phosphorus process with insufficient circulation to oppose it.
The result of too great intellectuality and sclf-centredncss is
physical hardening in later life.

Aluminium and phosphorus may thus be called mineral sub¬
stances swinging pendulum-like between lime and silica. Each
does so in its own characteristic way, which is the polar opposite
of the other.

Now let us find the macrocosmic place of origin of these
processes.

In winter, when the sun has just passed its lowest point, and
at the feast of the Magi (January 6) the days have lengthened by
a hair’s breadth, we begin to get the feeling of having crossed

137

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

the threshold between autumn and springtime. The sun stands
at this point in the sign of Capricorn, the mountain goat. Strange
to say, old representations of this animal show it with a fish-tail.
How wonderful a picture of the double nature of aluminium!
The goat represents its inclination to lime, the hard and dry, and
the fish-tail its affinity to water-loving silica. The whole picture
symbolizes the triumph of living plasticity over rocky hardness.

Phosphorus is an isolating agent, despite its capacity to span
the polarity of lime and silica; for it makes the individual conscious
of his separation from the world about him, thus creating the
basis for psychological and physical self-awarcncss. These forces
originate in the zodiacal region which the ancients saw as the
'crab' - Cancer. The calcium phosphate shell that isolates the
crab from its surroundings pictures the separateness of conscious
selfhood. That which begins in the human organism as bodily
awareness, as the sense of being a self housed in a body and
possessed of independent thinking, only very gradually com¬
pletes its formative task on the organs, and finally lays hold of
the lime process to harden the skeleton. In the crab’s case, the
same forces are expended on making a material sheath of calcium
phosphate.

Capricorn and Cancer are, then, the cosmic regions that en¬
gender aluminium and phosphorus. And like these terrestrial
substances they are polar opposites, confronting one another
across the great circle of the Zodiac.

138

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Mineral Cross

We saw in a previous chapter that lime and silica are opposite
poles of the cosmos, with aluminium and phosphorus, a
second polar pair, engaged in a harmonizing pendulum-swing
between the first pair. It would be possible to explore many

more aspects of this relationship than there is space for here.
The indications given above, however, may perhaps serve to illus¬
trate clearly the harmonious interplay of these four substances,
particularly in the field of physiology.

The aluminium and phosphorus processes work, as we have
seen, in blood and nerves, linking silica and lime, the skin and
skeleton. Blood is the plastic element that builds and maintains

139

THE NATURE OF SUESTANCE

the body tissue, whereas nerves transmit the formative forces
that take over the plastic material provided by the blood and
give it the shape of muscles and organs. The phosphorus process
active here is like a sculptor’s hand, with its sensitive touch for
shaping plastic clay.

Aluminium and phosphorus, then, are a polarity midway
between the polar opposites lime and silica. The macrocosmic
processes that create these four substances spring from four
cosmic points of origin which form a cross : Aries - Libra/Capri-
corn - Cancer. Just as we found the four substances: hydrogen -
oxygen/nitrogen - carbon falling into the pattern of an ‘atmo¬
spheric cross’ which pointed to the cosmic sources of protein and
of all organic nature, there is a similar comprehensive significance
in the cross formed by silica - lime/aluminium - phosphorus.

It can easily be shown that the whole mineral earth is really
built in the main of these four substances. Organic creation with
its flowers, trees and grasses, its butterflies, beetles and other
creatures is as it were a panorama of fleeting images that seem
to emerge out of the atmosphere, take on material form, and
just as quickly melt away again. Mineral nature, with its mountain
ridges, its plains and valleys, is by contrast the stable, solid core
of this passing show. Or perhaps wc should say, relatively stable;
for it too came into being out of the great reaches of the universe,
and will one day dissolve back into it.

In a preceding chapter we related the atmospheric cross ionned
by hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and carbon to the four Aristot¬
elian elements: fire, air, water, earth. This fourfold principle, in
which earth's evolutionary phases can be recognized, is so funda¬
mental that we may expect to find it again in the mineral cross.
Disregarding for the moment the natural, earthly state of these
minerals and considering them purely as principles, or processes,
wc do indeed find the four Aristotelian elements reflected in
them. The relationship of the highly inflammable phosphorus
to fire is immediately obvious. Then there is the silica process
with its affinity to lightness and buoyancy, exemplified in the
flight of birds and the spherical tendency inherent in the formative
forces of the macrocosm; here we discern a relationship to light
and air. Aluminium, which has so strong a proclivity to the

140

THE MINERAL CROSS

plastic, to the levelling, flowing liquid element, leaves no doubt
where it belongs. And the statics of lime clearly shows its relation
to the earthy clement.

To sum up these conclusions so far:

Aristotle Atmosphere

Macrocosm

Geosphere

Macrocosm

fire

hydrogen

Q Leo

phosphorus

Cancer

'(H)

(?)

air

nitrogen

d Taurus

silica

t Aries

(N)

(Si)

water

oxygen

Aquarius

aluminium

11 Capricorn

(O)

(Al)

earth

carbon

ill Scorpio

calcium

^ Libra

(C)

(Ca)

Organic nature

Mineral nature

141

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Alkalis and Halogens

The largest, most inexhaustible source of salt is the ocean,
where the percentage of dissolved salt is 3% or more* This
salt is extracted by a panning or refining process in which the
evaporation surface is increased and the sea water subjected either
to concentration or to evaporation. Similar processes have been
carried out by nature when, in the course of earth’s evolution,
a catastrophe or other geological event made an inland sea of
some part of the ocean- This is the origin of salt deposits*
There arc many spots in Europe where such deposits have been
found, often enclosed by layers of rock. Nearby towns sometimes
got their names from this proximity - for example, Salzburg,
Halle* on the Saal, Rciclienhall, Hallstatt, Hall in the Tyrol,
Leopoldshall, Scliweizerhall, and so on. One of the largest salt
deposits is at Stassfurt, Anhalt*

Geologists have reckoned that the amount of salt contained in
the ocean would be more than enough to construct all the land
now above sea level, including mountain ranges. This means that
there is as much salt in the sea as there is solid rock on land.

What do we mean when in chemistry we describe something
as a salt?

We have already recognized bases and acids to be a polarity.
The base and acid tendencies already noted in lime and silica
respectively conic to clearest expression in the polarity represented
by alkalis and halogens* The harmonizing of these polar forces
produces salts* Salt is thus a mineralized state of balance between
base and acid-forming forces, between alkali and halogen.

To understand this better we must first look into the essential
nature of alkalis and halogens* Since salt is composed of both a
base and an acid, we can bring out the character of the alkali by
eliminating the acid.

There is an old-established chemical process for converting salt
into soda, now known as the Leblanc soda process* Salt is heated
with sulphuric acid, making sodium sulphate. Tins is then

* The German 'HalT means 'salt1.

142

ALKALIS AND HALOGENS

brought to a red-hot glow over a coal fire, which reduces it to
sodium sulphide, and treated with lime to yield soda.

2NaCl — > Na2S04 — ► Na2S — > Na2C03

Sodium Sodium Sodium Sodium

chloride sulphate sulphide carbonate

(salt) (soda)

Various other processes are currently employed in commercial
soda-production, but the one described above and named after
Leblanc is the classical one still in use.

Soda is found in nature in the form of double-salt crystals on
the shores of salt lakes in Egypt. Egyptians called salt ‘neter’; the
Latin word for soda, ‘nitrum’, was derived from it. Alchemists
of the Middle Ages borrowed the term when they called salt¬
petre ‘sal nitri’. Later on, chemists called soda ‘natrum’ to dis¬
tinguish it from saltpetre, which was termed ‘nitrum*. We get
our term ‘natrium’ for the salt from which soda is made from
the same source.

Soda comes close to being a true alkali. All we have to do to get
pure caustic soda is to ‘sharpen up* or causticizc a soda solution
with slaked lime.

Na2C03+ Ca(OH)2 -> 2NaOH + CaC03

Soda Slaked lime Sodium hydroxide Calcium carbonate

(caustic soda)

Caustic potash (lye) is similarly derived from potassium car¬
bonate, a substance found wherever plant matter has been
reduced to ashes. Wood ashes (potash) consist chiefly of potassium
carbonate. They have long been used in laundering, and as lye,
their caustic form, in soap manufacture.

K2C03+ Ca(OH)2 -> 2KOH + CaC03
Potash Slaked lime Potassium hydroxide Calcium

(lye, caustic potash) carbonate

The ‘Stassfurt waste-salts’ are the chief source of potassium
salts at the present time. When sea water, which contains com¬
mon salt in a proportion of one hundred parts to approximately

143

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

two of potassium salts, is evaporated, the lighter potassium salts
stay in solution longer than the common salt does. They then
form a layer only a few metres thick on top of the salt deposits,
which at Stassfurt reach a depth of nine hundred metres* This
top layer had to be removed to get at the common salt below - at
that time the only part that was considered valuable. This gave
the potassium salts their name of waste-salts.

Sodium, potassium, and a few other rarer bases, such as
lithium, rubidium and caesium, arc all called alkalis, and they arc
chemically and physically very closely related.

One special characteristic of all the alkalis stands out in the
following experiment :

Some metal salt, such as copper sulphate or silver nitrate, is
carefully dropped into an alkali solution. The drops do not imme¬
diately merge with the solution, but keep to their drop-form,
enclosed by delicate, veil-like skins. Often they dissolve slowly
into a colloidal system, particularly in the presence of "protective
colloids* such as proteins. Colloidal solutions, as we know, arc
especially prone to surface tension. One can picture them as
liquids with tiny droplets or particles evenly dispersed through
them. Every such droplet or particle in these solutions may be
described as no longer subject to ordinary earth conditions, for
in the colloidal state it has a protective skin that keeps it from
combining with other substances* Alkalis, then, have a proclivity
to form enclosing sheaths, and the colloidal state may be looked
upon as a further development in this direction.

As we know, the body fluids chyle, lymph and blood serum,
are colloids, as is the sap that is the life-blood of the vegetable
kingdom* All the up-building processes having to do with growth
and nutrition in plants, animals and man alike arc maintained by
alkaline colloids present in the fluids of the various organs. In
plants this alkali is chiefly potassium; in men and animals, soda.
Up-building processes in man are localized in the area between
the intestines, liver and kidneys. Physiologists and doctors are
very familiar with the importance of alkalis for the liver functions.
Here, where both in man and animal vegetative processes arc
especially active, we find potassium, the characteristic plant
alkali.

ALKALIS AND HALOGENS

The capacity to form enclosing sheaths is the most significant
aspect of alkalis, as may be noted in the case of those used in
ordinary daily life. We see this capacity very clearly in the clean¬
ing and laundering properties of alkali compounds. They are
especially effective in combination with fats and oils. Soap is just
such a combination. It is colloid, and produces an emulsion,
foam. What is foam other than a great increase in surfaces?
Bubbles of foam envelope objects and particles of dirt, and soften
them. A woollen cloth dipped in clear water does not always even
get wet. But in soapy water every fibre and each least speck of
dirt on it is at once fondly embraced, surrounded, softened and
dissolved.

We described oil as condensed cosmic warmth. Soap, which
is a boiled mixture of oil and alkali, is thus a carrier of enclosing
warmth.

The sheath- forming potentiality of alkalis is not to be equated
with silica’s form-creating surface action. Silica is itself a cosmic
sheath, whereas alkalis arc simply earthly sheaths that enclose
whatever comes into their domain.

If one searches for an appropriate picture to express artistically
the nature of alkali’s enclosing gesture, wc come upon the
pictures of a maternal organism giving shelter to the child-to-be.
What is meant here can be experienced by contemplating the
Sistine.Madonna. Here we see the mother surrounded by a host
of angels, bearing in her arms a child that seems to be one of
them. She has wrapped her mantle protectively around it. We
feel in the gesture her deep connection with the heavenly powers
for which she has provided earthly shelter.

In ancient times, when no one doubted that the terrestrial is
always a housing for the spirit, this truth was felt to be pictured
in the constellation of Virgo, the virgin. Here could be experi¬
enced the sheath- forming power, whence forces of fertility and
ripening rayed down to earth.

The sun, which mediates these forces to the earth, passes
through the constellation of Virgo in September, the season
when all vegetative burgeoning is concentrated in the swelling
fruit. These fruits harbour the future in the form of seed ripening.
We might say that an apple can be seen as a picture of brimming

145

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

sap confined within a form by the Virgo forces active in the
alkali.

Now, let us go on from these explorations of salt's base-form¬
ing aspect to consider its acid-forming aspect.

Our senses provide immediate clues. Most alkalis are thick,
even oily-appcaring fluids, especially in concentrated form. But
acids, especially the halogens, are usually thin and runny, and in
their pure form can even be gaseous. Alkalis taken into the
mouth seem to be expanding and filling it, while acids arc sour
and contractive. Alkalis arc slimy and slippery to the touch;
diluted acids feel astringent.

One can conclude from these experiences that alkalis, like
everything hospitable to life, are of a waxing, flowing, expansive
nature, while acids are dry, contractive and hostile to growth. In
concentrated form, or on longer exposure, they attack other
substances aggressively, searing the skin, for example, and making
wounds like burns. They break down, burn, or dissolve what
conics in contact with them. They are the solvents used on ores
and metals. They have a close bond with hydrogen, enhancing
its destructive or dissolving fire-force. Alkalis, in contrast, have
an affinity with water, or else with oxygen.

Alkalis, then, arc passive, receptive, support-giving; acids,
positive and active.

These characteristics show up very clearly in connection with
colour. All natural plant-dyes - litmus, or the juice of some berry
or fruit such as cranberry, elderberry or cherry, or a blossom
colour - move in the presence of an alkali to the passive, dark side
of the spectrum: blue, or violet. The addition of one small drop
of an even slightly acid substance makes the colour move toward
the active, light side and turn yellow, orange, and red.

Alkalis conduce to the colloidal state. They increase surface
area, and enfold things, thus helping life to flourish. Acids are
hostile to the colloidal condition and the developments it en¬
courages. They press towards decisive action; they either curdle
colloids or reduce them to a true solution. Fresh milk is an
example of a colloid. Souring curdles it; it separates into curds
and the transparent whey.

The acid-forming agents known as halogens - fluorine,

146

ALKALIS AND HALOGENS

chlorine, bromine, iodine, and their acids, hydrofluoric, hydro¬
chloric, hydrobromic and hydriodic acids - are as like each
other in character as arc the alkalis among themselves.

Chemists arc familiar with the similar behaviour of these
substances, as is the physicist with their peculiar light reactions.
In an earlier chapter we spoke of iodine as a light-thief. This last
and densest member of the halogen group manifests its relation
to light only in this overwhelming, total - one might almost say
brutal - manner. Fluorine, the first and lightest of the halogens,
exhibits the phenomenon of fluorescence. Its acid, hydrofluoric
acid, is the strongest, chemically speaking. It is such a powerful
solvent that it can dissolve glass. We can melt the broken end of
a glass rod and round it off by using hydrofluoric acid just as
easily as with a bunsen burner.

This capacity for rounding off can be seen at work in the
human organism too, and most clearly in the shaping of the
teeth. When a child's second teeth come through, they some¬
times looked jagged and even broken. This is because their sur¬
faces are still unfinished, a condition due to a disturbance of the
fluorine or hydrofluoric acid process. Just as the broken end of a
glass rod can be melted into a rounded edge, the jagged teeth
are rounded off by enamel as they emerge.

Other bodily processes, too, are related to the fluorine process.
There is an illness in which the development of certain extremi¬
ties such as the nose, chin, fingers and toes is not rounded off
and brought to a close, but continues indefinitely. Here, again,
the defining process which should give every last part and form
the full working through and rounding off proper to it has not
taken hold as it should have done. And the same condition can
develop in the digestive tract when food is not properly meta¬
bolized and the contents of the intestines arc insufficiently worked
over and formed. We call it diarrhoea, and its cause may also be
sought in a disturbance of the fluorine process. All these cases
can be treated with potentized preparations of fluorspar (calcium
fluoride), to stimulate the fluorine process.

All organic disturbances affect our thought-life in due course,
and the above is no exception. How often we witness an in¬
capacity to 4 think things through’, to draw the necessary con-

147

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

elusions from a train of thought! Loss of memory may be its
final consequence.

We see the characteristic activity of the halogens in these pro¬
cesses, It is cosmic activity, pressing urgently toward the con¬
clusion of some train of action, rounding our destiny, as often
with destructive violence as with constructive, creative impulses.

The ancients saw these processes proceeding from the con¬
stellation of Pisces, the fish. This symbol is not readily understood
without reference to its ancient meaning. The four last signs of
the Zodiac were pictures of human occupations: Sagittarius is
the hunter, Capricorn the animal breeder (with the fish-tail
picturing the taming of the wild beasts), Aquarius the tiller of the
soil, and Pisces the trader on his ocean voyages. The paired fish
of Pisces were also a symbol of the feet, and so of travelling.
Here wc find another indication of the characteristic activity, the
moving toward conclusions, the fulfilling of destiny which wc
have been describing. One docs not think out one’s destiny; one
'walks’ an appointed path. Just as Virgo symbolizes the selfless
offering of an enclosing sheath within which other life develops,
Pisces pictures an active coming to grips with the world and
destiny. And like the alkalis and halogens which they create,
Virgo and Pisces are antipodes confronting each other from
opposite sides of the cosmos.

Receptive love and ego-like activity pour through the heavenly
and earthly spheres from these two macrocosmic points of
origin, Virgo and Pisces. But their interaction engenders a third
force: the salt of the earth, which in the realm of life stands for
the balanced organism; in the realm of the spirit, cosmic evo¬
lution.

148

CHAPTER. TWENTY-THREE

Magnesia and Sulphur

Most people know that the sea contains magnesium in the
form of salts, particularly magnesium sulphate* Sea salt
consists on average of sixteen per cent of magnesium salts. We
mentioned the fact that there is enough common salt dis¬
solved in the earth’s oceans to build all the continents and moun¬
tain ranges. The proportion of magnesium in the salt would
suffice for the building of one entire continent. By contrast with
such a huge mass of magnesium, the amount of magnesium-
bearing rock found in the earth’s mountains, in the form of
magnesite, dolomite, and the magnesium silicates like mica,
hornblende and asbestos, is negligible*

Magnesium salts, however, are found in tremendous layers in
the Stassfurt salt deposits. These are the chief workable source of
magnesium and its salts on the European continent, hut their
sheer volume and very limited use make them a troublesome
dead load for the potassium industry*

To form a conception of the nature of magnesium we shall
have to concern ourselves with magnesia-hearing rock. Magnesite
- magnesium carbonate - stands out, for it is used industrially in
burnt form. During the firing process it changes into magnesium
oxide. It is this oxide’s resistance to heat that makes it so valuable
in manufacturing* High temperatures fuse an initially light, fluffy
powder into rock almost impossible to melt* This capacity to
resist heat, which holds up under temperatures as high as 2,ooo°C.
and more, makes magnesia valuable as a lining material in steel-
smelting furnaces* So we may say that it preserves its static
character even when attacked by fire, but with a behaviour
different from that of lime* While lime becomes violent on
firing, magnesia remains calm and gentle; it is not given to
hissings, greedy devourings, and corrosive action* Quicklime is
a corrosive base, which earns it the name corrosive lime. Mag¬
nesia is a mild base.

Magnesia’s resistance to heat is coupled with another quality:
it radiates light with an intensity hard to equal* When magnesium

149

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

bums and turns into magnesia it makes a blinding white light
that casts shadows even in full sunlight. So we see that the sun’s
rays themselves* as they reach the earth* cannot match the in¬
tensity of light magnesium gives off. This property causes mag¬
nesium to be widely used in the making of all sorts of lighting
equipment.

This power to ray out* so characteristic of magnesia* also
appears morphologically in the ray-formation of magnesium¬
bearing rock. Magnesium silicates* such as actinolite, serpentine,
talc, asbestos, and the like, tend especially to a radiating or
fibrous structure, reminiscent - as asbestos is - of textile fibre.
Asbestos is actually used to make fireproof thread, doth, rope
and wall-boards.

A further phenomenon is produced by magnesium’s affinity
to light. Those who have visited the southern Tyrol and wit¬
nessed there the glorious spectacle of the * Alpine glow’, will
remember its beauty for the rest of their lives. These mountains,
the Dolomites, are built of so-called dolomitic limestone, an iso¬
morphic mixture of calcium carbonate and magnesite. It is harder
than ordinary limestone and does not as a rule have the radiating
structure usually found in magnesia rock. But when the sun has
sunk behind the horizon, the light these peaks have absorbed
shines out at the onset of darkness with a gentle rose-red glow.

This unparalleled affinity to light possessed by magnesium ex¬
plains its presence in the substance chlorophyll and the role it
plays in assimilation. Plants, as we know, are made of light, and
in the sheaved rays of cellulose fibres we really have, so to speak,
materialized sun rays. Here magnesium shows itself in the role
of a light-propellant in assimilation. It is magnesium that thrusts
light into the dense materiality of starch and cellulose. The same
propulsive forces are at work in spring when seeds* which contain
considerable amounts of magnesium, begin to germinate, often
thrusting up heavy layers of earth or snow in the process.

The same dynamic function serves the human organism
wherever solid matter is excreted or separated off from fluids.
We see this happening most obviously in the digestive process,
at the point where waste matter is separated out of the chyme
and takes on a firmer consistency. The drastic effect of ingesting

150

MAGNESIA AND SULPHUR

Epsom salt (magnesium sulphate) indicates the close connection
of magnesium with intestinal functioning.

Deep inside the organism there are other eliminative processes
which must be recognized as such. One of these is the depositing
of bone-building matter in the skeleton, likewise a moulding of
solids out of fluids. This process is most obvious in young chil¬
dren, whose organisms are still very plastic and as yet scarcely
mineralized. Their bones are subject to a hardening process that
reaches its culmination and completion in the emergence of the
second teeth, the last and hardest product of the body. At this
point the solid organism has been separated from the fluid. And
forces that previously served organic functions are now set free,
in the form of a capacity to think and remember, making the
child ready to begin his schooling.

It is the magnesium process which we see at work in all such
developments. On the one hand it plays the role of a hardening
agent, compressing life into solid earthly form. On the other it
activates light-forces. Thus it combines startlingly contrasting
functions.

These contrasts are represented in zodiacal imagery as the
centaur. His horse’s body symbolizes ties with earthly animality,
yet with the rest of his being he raises himself to a luminous
human height. In mythology the picture of the centaur with his
bow and arrow has always been the symbol of these contrasting
forces. The ancients experienced them as proceeding from that
part of the heavens known as the constellation of the hunter,
Sagittarius.

In sea water along with magnesium, we find sulphur in the
form of magnesium sulphate. This gives some idea of the enor¬
mous amount of sulphur dissolved in the various seas and oceans.

Free sulphur, which occurs at Girgenti in Sicily and at Murcia
and Albacete in Spain, has in the past been attributed to volcanic
action. Lately it has been viewed as a product also of the ocean.
According to this school of thought, sulphuric acid salts such as
anhydrite (CaS04) + Kieserite (MgS04.H20) are subject to a
kind of putrefaction which produces hydrogen sulphide. Pre¬
cipitated in the form of sulphur partly by the air, partly by
bacterial action (Beggiatoa alba), it works its way into sedimentary

151

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

layers of clay and limestone and is then extracted by a smelting
process.

Volcanic sulphur, which is still being deposited around Ml
Etna, comes from deeper strata in the earth. It would seem that
sulphur originates in processes taking place deep within the
earth, a finding that need not contradict the theory of putrefying
sulphuric acid salts. Sulphur deposits invariably occur in regions
heated by volcanic action.

To trace the origin of sulphur is to have described its being:
it is a substance with a great affinity to warmth. It is inflammable,
burning with a very hot, dark flame. It combines readily with the
warmth-bearer, hydrogen, making hydrogen sulphide (H2S).
This is a gas released by putrefactive processes, with the charac¬
teristic odour of rotten eggs.

This means, in turn, that there must be some sulphur in
protein and in all organic substances that give off hydrogen
sulphide in decay. And we do find it in all living organisms, even
if sometimes only as a trace* This fact indicates how vital sulphur
is to all organic life*

In this connection, one characteristic of sulphur that no other
substance exhibits to a like degree is of special interest. It pos¬
sesses such a capacity for change that we find it in six to seven
modifications. We distinguish rhombic, monoclinic and amor¬
phous sulphur, as well as two liquid forms, one a thin fluid and the
other a thick fluid known as lambda and mu respectively, and a
plastic sulphur like elastic. All these forms can exist within a
comparati vely narrow range of temperatures* One form can be
changed into another simply by heating.

It is very easy to make a colloid of sulphur. According to the
size of the particles in sulphur brines, the colour ranges from
light yellow to red, purple and blue; in reflected light the solu¬
tions are blue or green. According to J. Hoffmann, the ultra-
marine colour obtained from clay and sodium sulphide also
results from the formation of a blue colloidal sulphur* The many
industrially important 'sulphur dyes’ produced by the Cassell a
firm are probably also colloidal forms of sulphur. They are made
by heating various organic substances with sulphur and alkali
sulphides.

152

MAGNESIA AND SULPHUR

Chemically speaking, sulphur is the most active of all sub¬
stances. It does not act in any one clear direction as do the halogens
and oxygen; rather does it form combinations in a sociable way,
creates new possibilities and supplies warmth, acting towards
other substances as a kind of cook*

Sulphur's function in protein is of just such a nature. Its liking
for the colloidal state and thus for everything alive, its capacity
for change, its brood-warmth make it a natural mixer of sub¬
stances, particularly the organic. It is the carrier of upbuilding
vital forces, looked at materially, though not in the same sense as
oxygen, which presses into living manifestation out of macro-
cosmic realms of spirit. Sulphur is rather a uniting force that
prompts cosmic essences to work together in building up matter.
It gives itself over wholly to organic life, promotes its physical
functioning, and in this way keeps it clear of infringements from
the side of consciousness.

Sulphur thus plays a very important role in metabolic pro¬
cesses. Everyone knows how harmful emotions such as anger,
fear and worry can be at mealtime. Digestive upsets are sure to
result. Sulphur in die appropriate dosage is a common remedy
for such afflictions, for it supports digestion by guiding nutri-
donal elements, especially protein, over into the life of the
organism in the proper way. It is active wherever a too close
connection of the emotions and consciousness with the vegetative-
physical indicates a need for a releasing agent; in cases, that is,
where we need to have more life in our physical processes, with
no interference from the activities of the soul
The fact that sulphur has this effect is shown when an excess
of it causes dizziness or a dimming of consciousness. This same
effect makes sulphur useful in treating insomnia. For sleep is an
extreme bodily condition in which the whole organism behaves
as the metabolic system normally docs. Soul and consciousness
are driven out and separated completely from the purely vege¬
tative-physical life-processes, so that these are left free to do their
up-building work undisturbed.

This gives sulphur a dual nature such as the centaur has, except
that it is the reverse of his. The centaur's higher self saves him
from becoming wholly hardened in animality and lifts him to-

*53

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

wards the light. He longs to cast off, to reject, his lower nature.
The dual-naturcd sulphur, however, inclines to the purely vege¬
tative, rejecting the higher qualities which lead towards the
development of consciousness.

When we walk through a blossoming meadow in June, the
month when the sun is in the constellation Gemini, we can feel
the sulphuric element rampant in all the sprouting and flowering
of nature. The soul of nature slumbers like the Sleeping Beauty,
in the midst of all this vegetative burgeoning. In their blossoms,
plants come into touch with the soul-sphere which is the source
of consciousness in animals, but with the aid of the sulphur
activity within them they keep the soul-sphere from penetrating
more deeply into their organisms. Otherwise, as we know, they,
would become poisonous.

When, in December, the sun passes through Sagittarius, almost
every physical trace of plant life has disappeared ; tiny, mineral¬
ized seeds are all that remain. But the being of the plant has
withdrawn to live in the luminous heights of the realm of
archetypes, where it reaches a culmination at the time of the
winter solstice.

Thus we see how the processes active in sulphur and magnesia
lay hold of and penetrate man and nature, having originated
respectively in the constellations of Gemini and Sagittarius.

154

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Oceanic Cross

We described the halogens and alkalis, magnesia and sulphur
in such a way as to show that their qualities are polar
opposites, yet complementary. The macrocosmic processes in
which these substances originate may be traced to four regions
of the cosmos; Pisces-Virgo and Sagittarius-Gemini. They form
a cosmic cross.

The Hydro-sphere-cross

(Alongside the Mineral cross and the Atmospheric cross).

Just as we could speak of an atmospheric and of a mineral cross
in the Zodiac, we can call the cross made by Pisces-Virgo and

155

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Sagittarius-Gemini an oceanic cross. The substances that make
up the atmospheric cross and work from the air mantle of the
earth create the forms of organic nature; the substances of the
mineral cross go to the formation of the earth's hard core; the
substances of the oceanic cross fill the oceans with their salts.

The substances comprising the atmospheric cross, hydrogen*
nitrogen* oxygen and carbon, and those that make up the mineral
cross, phosphorus, silica, aluminium and lime, were correlated
with the four Aristotelian elements: fire, air, water and earth.
The same fourfold principle is to be found in the substances of
the oceanic cross.

Sulphur's fire-nature is obvious. The halogen processes were
described as making for decisive actions and as having an affinity
to light, shown even by the halogen substances. These sub¬
stances, too, are cither gaseous or volatile. Magnesia, however,
has an exceedingly strong affinity to water, despite its association
with light and hardness. Its salts liquefy on exposure to the air;
they dissolve easily and in tremendous amounts in water; and
they are far more readily soluble than common salt. And the
alkalis, representatives of the bases, belong clearly to the earth-
element, This can be summarized as follows:

Aristotle Atmosphere Hydrosphere Geo sphere

Fire Hydrogen (H) Sulphur (S) Phosphorus (P)

Air Nitrogen (N) Halogens (F, Cl, etc.) Silica (Si)

Water Oxygen (O) Magnesia (Mg) Aluminium (Al)

Earth Carbon (C) Alkalis (K, Na, etc,) Lime (Ca)

Cosmos Organic nature Salts of the earth Mineral earth

One peculiarity of the oceanic cross deserves mention. In the
present epoch the sun rises at the spring equinox in Pisces, At
this significant moment, sunrise, the constellation Virgo is in the
west. The east-west axis thus coincides with the cosmic axis
Pisces-Virgo, while the north-south axis coincides with that
joining Sagittarins-Gcmini. One can hardly imagine such a
significant spatial configuration passing without leaving some
specific imprint on the times. Even though the astronomical
pattern changes in due course, it would seem that a particular

156

THE OCEANIC CROSS

configuration must leave some permanent spiritual mark on the
cosmos. This can help us to understand the difference between
zodiacal signs and constellations* Wc know that they no longer
correspond, as they must have done at the beginning of our era,
in the time of Christ.

We have now completed our description of all the zodiacal
constellations as points of origin of those processes which come
to earthly fixity and culmination in the various substances. Such
substances as have not yet put in an appearance come from other
cosmic spheres. We will devote the following pages to exploring
them.

One further aspect of the Zodiac remains to be considered.
The sun, rising in spring in Pisces, journeys through the constella¬
tions Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer and Leo as the spring and
summer months go by. Apart from their individual character¬
istics, these constellations have the common feature of corres¬
ponding to acid-forming substances: the halogens, silica, nitro¬
gen, sulphur, phosphorus and hydrogen {in the form of the
H-ion) are all acid-formers. Only in autumn, when the sun
enters Virgo, docs it begin transmitting base-forming forces,
with the alkalis. This goes on until the end of winter by way of
the base-forming lime, carbon (as organic base), magnesia,
aluminium, and oxygen (as the OH-ion). Where the two worlds
of bases and acids meet, wc find intermediate stages, such as the
more or less neutral hydrogen (at the end of summer) and oxygen
(at the transition of winter over into spring). And the amphoteric
nature of aluminium is characteristically found between the
bases and the acids, between the summer and the winter halves
of the Zodiac.

157

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Metals

If one starts from Goethe’s way of looking at nature as a whole
and makes it the basis for new studies, pursued with an open
mind and some artistic sensitivity, one finds that many pheno¬
mena will appear in a new light and will also reveal significant
connections with one another. In this spirit we will go on to
examine the special characters of the various metals and their
relationship to other earthly substances.

If we come across a piece of quartz, calcite, marble, or some
other crystal, we usually find it composed of the same material
or chemical elements as the region in which it occurs; it is just a
particularly pure, finished form of the native rock. But ores are
quite another thing. These, with their metal content, run through
the earth in narrow veins. They cannot therefore be looked upon
as building materials like lime, silica, aluminium and phosphorus.
The relation of metals to the earth and to man is completely
different from that of non-metallic substances.

Metals appeal to us because of the warm, responsive, lively
qualities they exhibit in their resonance, their colourful glittering,
their conductivity for warmth and electricity. Stone and crystals,
indeed the whole category of minerals, are by contrast insensitive,
silent, immobile. True, the non-metallic minerals do achieve
crystalline transparency; they can be clear and noble, as only a
quartz crystal can be. But they keep to themselves and enter into
no intimate relationship with anything. Their pure forms are
perfect and remote.

It is the mobility, the inner liveliness of metals, that attracts us
to them. When we happen on a piece of pyrite or some other
metal, it affects us quite differently than do the non-metallic
minerals. The former touch and move us with the soul-like fire
in their sparkling and their ringing tone, while the latter lead us
to marvel at their mathematical forms which remain unaltered
for thousands of years. Wherever metals arc, there is found the
wonderful unrest of work and effort.

That is why metals have always played such an important part

158

THE METALS

in the history of civilization. Various epochs have even taken
their names from the metals then in use. Metals provide human
tools; they can be forged and cast, hammered and drawn. This,
together with their resonance and their conductivity, has been
of immense significance in the cultural development of humanity.
The earthly minerals seem stolid beside them. They have neither
resonance nor conductivity, nor arc they malleable.

The properties of the metals are more closely connected with
our own nature than at first appears. They arc deeply related to
us and to our progress through time. Indeed, one could say that
the non-metals stand to the metals as inarticulate objects do to
the feeling and music inherent in the human soul.

This same contrast appears again in the basic elements of
human speech. Creative forces are reflected in the fundamental
structure of language. In earlier times people felt this and knew
how to value the deeper significance of the spoken word. Nowa¬
days language is simply a means of communication, but this was
not so in the past. A dying man’s curse or blessing held real power,
for in the spoken word lived the same creative forces that built
and maintain the cosmos and gave rise to our earthly substances as
their final precipitation. Today, we have scarcely an inkling of
the real power of the word. But those who have some feeling
for what language does can still recognize the power of spoken
words in contrast to a written communication.

Language has an element that we can feel to be structural or
formative: the consonants. Vowels confer a different element:
movement. They give ‘voice’ to language, the varying flow of
sound that maintains its tonal continuity. Through vowels we
express our innermost feelings. We use pure vowel-sounds
when we exclaim ‘Ah!’ or ‘Oh!’ or ‘Oo!’ But when we want to
describe what goes on outside us in nature: reverberating thunder,
the crackle of a wood fire, the crunching of ice, the sound of a
stone plopping into the water, we use consonants, for these are
related to nature’s elements, to voiceless objects. Consonants are
crystallized, rigidified expressions of an impersonal world of form
beyond the human; vowels are carriers of mobile personal feeling.
One might say that while consonants form the body or the
bony framework of a word, vowels are its soul and heart’s blood.

159

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Minerals and metals bring these same characteristics to ex¬
pression in another way. The relationship of metals to minerals
is like that of vowels to consonants.

In terms of their characteristic properties the most familiar
metals can be ranged, surprisingly enough, in a regular sequence.
So we find that silver has the best conductivity, the purest tone
and the finest lustre; copper and mercury follow in that order.
Silver’s place at the head of the list is due to qualities that account
for its wide use as a coating on mirrors and in strings for musical
instruments; it is known to produce the purest, clearest tones.
The metal least endowed with these properties is lead, closely
followed by tin and iron. One would scarcely think of associating
tone or lustre with lead, and it is such a poor conductor that it
melts before any appreciable amount of warmth or electricity
can pass through it. This makes it the best material for fuses in
electrical circuits and heating installations.

Gold holds the balance between these two groups of metals.
The following table shows the comparative degree to which each
metal possesses resonance, lustre and conductivity for heat and
electricity:

Conductivity
/ - A - *

Resonance Lustre Heat Electricity

Lead

Tin

Iron

Gold

Mercury

Copper

Silver ,, „

A study of the relative malleability of these metals shows them
in the same order, silver and copper being the most malleable.
But if we try to cast these pure metals, we shall fail. The trouble
is that they absorb several times their own volume of air when
molten, only to let it escape as they harden. Cast silver and copper
are full of bubbles and holes, making their surfaces resemble
craters. Foundrymen say that silver ‘splutters’,

160

THE METALS

Lead and tin, however, lend themselves to casting, as many
readers who have taken part in fortune-telling games involving
lead-pouring will know from their own experience. But both
resist hammering, becoming brittle and foliated.

Here too, gold occupies the middle position, for it can both be
cast and hammered. The works of goldsmiths of antiquity and
medieval times bear out this fact, as docs the remarkable skill
with which gold casts are used in modem dentistry. Gold would
not make good fillings if it ‘spluttered' as silver does. Iron and
mercury arc close to gold in lending themselves to both casting
and forging. We are as familiar with wrought iron as with cast
iron. Mercury’s malleability is not as well known, since most
people have seen it in a fluid state only, but it takes the shape of
a mould on freezing and hence can be cast. And these frozen casts
can also be hammered. Thus wc arrive at the following table:

Tin^}Can Cast kUt not ^orgcd

Iron

Gold V can be cast and forged
Mercury J

Copper j- can be forged but not cast

As wc sec, the dynamic properties of metals give the same
sequence.

This noteworthy fact is confirmed again in considering cosmic
aspects. After our exploration of the earth’s relationship to the
starry heavens and the constellations, this will not seem strange.
What, then, is the cosmic origin of the metallic processes?

Wc find in the planetary spheres a sequence similar to the one
discovered in relation to the properties of metals (Fig. 26).

We have already explained that there is no conflict between
the Ptolemaic and Copcrnican systems if we consider planetary
paths from the planetary-sphere standpoint.

Every planet travels the heavens at its own particular speed,
which can be expressed mathematically in terms of its angular
velocity. If we look at Venus through a telescope some evening
at six o’clock, and then try to find it at the same spot at six on

161

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

s?"ere of * f,'Xednir,

Spheres of the planets against the background of the fixed stars.

the following evening, we shall go astray. Venus has moved
ahead, and the telescope has to be adjusted accordingly* The
angle thus described is the daily angular velocity* The average
angular velocity was calculated from astronomical data for the
years 1916-1934 and expressed in degrees of movement for every
thirty-day period. The resulting figdres arc surprisingly cor¬
related with those found in physics textbooks on the conductivity
of metals, as appears from arranging the latter in the order now
grown familiar and juxtaposing them with the lists of planets.

Conductivity for Angular velocity

Warmths Electricity of the planets in degrees

Lead

Saturn

Tin

Jupiter

Iron

Mars

Gold

Sun

Mercury

(68)2

(76)2

Mercury

Copper

Venus

Silver

100

TOO

Moon

392

We see, then, that planetary movement is metamorphosed into
the properties of earthly metals. The impetus of the planets

162

THE METALS

appears in a metamorphosed way as conductivity. The planets
move on their rounds in great curves and loops against the im¬
mobile background of the fixed stars, just so do veins of metal
run through the body of the earth, and vowels sound through
the consonant structure of words and syllables.

Metals are thus wholly different from other minerals. And
the difference is qualitative, like that which distinguishes planets
from fixed stars, vowels from consonants.

The reason why quicksilver does not quite fit into the table
above will be made clear later. The figures shown in parentheses
indicate the conductivity of solid mercury.

There is a further fact that throws light on the special nature
of metals as compared with all other substances. The usual
arrangement of substances in the periodic system leaves no real
place for metals. Some of them arc put into the eighth group,
where they have an isolated existence unrelated to anything else.
The rest interrupt the scries of related elements, and are therefore
set off by themselves in side-columns. Copper, silver and gold
interrupt the series of alkalis in the first group, quicksilver the
alkalis of the second group, and so on. These facts will be gone
into more thoroughly in a later discussion of metals of the iron
group (Chapter Thirty- three). But it must be obvious already
that metals possess qualities that differ radically from those of
earths and other non-mctallic minerals.

165

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Copper

The name ‘copper' (cuprum) comes from Cyprus, the Medi¬
terranean island sacred to Venus* The Greeks obtained their
copper from there*

A visitor to a natural history museum interested in finding the
mineral with the most glorious display of colour will certainly
end up in the copper section, for the various ores have a shining
splendour that ranges from blue and green to red and purple.
Malachite, azurite, dioptas, chalcopyritc and bornitc vie with
each other in the glory of their colours. Few substances possess
such beauty. We can understand ascribing this metal to Venus
when we see what heavenly beauty is brought here into earthly
form*

Copper ores - especially the blue and green types - show by
their colour that they have a special affinity to water. And most
copper ores contain some water: malachite nearly 9%, azurite 6%,
asperolith (a copper silicate) as much as 29%. The soluble copper
salts, which form such marvellous blue and green crystals -
copper sulphate (blue vitriol) or copper chloride, for example -
contain up to 35% water. When heating removes the water,
the colour and the crystalline form both disappear* Malachite
breaks up into a black powder, while blue vitriol disintegrates
into a white powder 011 contact with dry air. This powder has
a great attraction for moisture, and on absorbing it quickly
returns to its familiar dark-blue crystallized state*

We may say, then, that copper absorbs water and changes it
into form and colour. This capacity for organizing fluids is a
characteristic copper attribute. Plants perform this function in
organic nature. Plant matter, which is 70% to 90% water, is
permeated by formative forces which organize it into form and
colour* Plant fibres are really condensed fluids* Copper, which
has the same tendency in the dead mineral world, is closely
bound up with all vegetative processes* We know that treating
cut flowers with copper keeps them fresh longer. This is often
done by putting copper coins in the vase with them. Certain

164

COPPER

copper ores even imitate plant forms. Malachite, for example,
tends to veined, leaflike surface patterns, and pure copper in its
natural state looks like tiny trees or leaves.

Chemically, copper is as versatile and many-sided as it is
lively in variety of forms. We see this in the great variety of
copper ores. Since the metal is so readily soluble in almost any
acid, there are very numerous, beautifully crystallized and
gloriously coloured salts. Green and blue predominate. Copper
is chemically so active that it combines with most other substances.
Avogadro’s law states that individual elements combine only in
simple and multiple proportions, resulting in simple molecular
formulae. But copper often seems to contradict this law by
forming so-called complex salts. It combines, for example, with
ammonia, with the alkaline salts of organic acids, and with sugar
and other carbohydrates to form groups of substances that still
present unsolved riddles. Despite painstaking research and much
theorizing, of which Werner’s theory of partial valencies is an
example, the molecular structure of such complexes remains
more or less obscure.

An ammoniacal copper solution - itself a complex compound
- dissolves cottonwool and even wood, thereby creating a still
more complex compound. When this is forced through very fine
tubing into a dilute solution of sulphuric acid, the acid destroys
the complex, causing the threads of liquid squirted into it to
solidify into cellulose again. One of the artificial silks (Bcmbcrg
silk) is made by this method.

We see, then, that copper cares little about the logic of chemical
laws. Its activity belongs to the unpredictable realm of life, where
change and surprises are the order of the day. Such is the nature
of the Venus clement wherever it is found. The planet itself ex¬
hibits these characteristics in the path it travels, in the way it
alternates its roles of morning and evening star, and in its changing
phases.

Copper is thus the substance in which is manifest the cosmic
process responsible for stimulating and maintaining a lively
circulation of the liquid clement. Hence it supports the various
vegetative functions of the human organism.

Chief among these are digestion and blood circulation. To

165

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

avoid misunderstanding* it must again be emphasized that when
we speak here of a copper activity* we mean a higher than
material process, A therapeutic use of copper therefore confines
itself to the higher potencies which are sufficiently dynamic to
have a curative effect in cases of fatigue or where regenerative
processes need stimulating, Wc will not attempt any further
elucidation here of the other special or wider connections of the
Venus or copper forces with the human organism. We are con¬
cerned solely with showing how the properties of copper are
characteristic of that process which the ancients associated with
Venus. The copper process, with its enlivening and organizing
effect on fluids which we witness in its creation of the surprising
complex compounds ; the beauty of the various material forms
of copper; indeed, its typical red-gold - all these are earthly
reflections of the Venus nature*

When copper is separated from the fluid element that per¬
meates it and reduced to the pure metal, we see the pure red
metallic copper appearing and can understand why alchemists
said of Venus that she had a blue cloak and a red spirit. Great
artists of the past either knew or sensed the truth about such
matters. So we find Botticelli painting his sea-born Venus with
hair of shining red and making her rise from blue-green ocean
waves. Even flame repeats this dynamic colour phenomenon, for
copper burns with a shining blue-green fire, and here and there
a flash of red-tipped flame.

166

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Tin

Tin is in many respects the opposite of copper. It occupies an
extremely modest position in the family of minerals. There
is only one important tin-ore: cassiterite. It is very plain-look¬
ing. It can be transparent, but is more frequently dark brown or
black. It is found in regular, almost spherical crystal form, in
granite or quartz. Only attentive observers with an eye for fine
detail will notice the fluctuating play of colour in the depths of
these dark crystals.

Tin, unlike copper, has a strong aversion to the fluid element.
Cassiterite is completely dry, and tin compounds produced in
the laboratory arc more apt to rid themselves of water than to
absorb it. Orthostannic acid, for example, tends to change into
metastannic acid, which contains less water. This is accompanied
by densification. The condensed particles adhere (polymerization)
and are precipitated ; dehydration proceeds here by way of poly¬
merization to precipitation.

It is worth noting in this connection that tin is found almost
exclusively in islands. The Phoenicians got their tin in Cornwall.
Nowadays most of our tin comes from islands of the Malay
archipelago. There are tin deposits in other islands or peninsulas,
Japan and Tasmania. Peru, the only important source of tin
not situated on a peninsula or island, is a high country that
geographers and geologists think may well have been an island
at one time. World tin production in the past thirty years averaged
one hundred and twenty thousand tons annually, and eighty
thousand tons of it came from Malaya.

Tin, which unlike copper withdraws from water and is
characteristically an island metal, seems to harbour a cosmic
force that conjures plastic forms out of fluids. Its dynamic is thus
the very opposite of copper’s. Copper is at home in the living
stream of circulating juices; like plants, it reaches for the light
and brings forth colour through a refining, ethercalizing process
that is all upward movement. Tin, however, dislikes water, con¬
denses fluids into solid forms and has a drying action on them.

167

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Its process is one of descent, its action like that of warm air in
drying up moisture and bringing out the element of form.

A further significant phenomenon is associated with these
processes of condensation and coagulation. The fluid extracted
from blossoms - blue flax, for example - is pale and well nigh
colourless. The addition of a drop of tin-salt solution transforms
it into the most glorious purple. That is why tin has always been
indispensable as a mordant in dyes and is still important in wool
and silk dyeing- We see that tin, itself colourless, has the effect
of bringing out latent colour. If we take the Goethean approach
and view colour as a harmonious interplay of light and darkness,
we shall realize that tin has the organizing power to relate die two.

T he same forces are at work in the synthesization of the "purple
of Cassius'. Essentially this is colloidal gold, but tin was required
to get the deep purple used in medieval times for staining glass.

Copper, then, belongs with the fluid element and with chemical
action, which reaches a high point in the glorious colours of its
salts. Tin is primarily a light and air organizing force; it works
down from these realms into the fluid element, creating form
there. The chemistry of tin, in contrast to copper, is as simple
and logical as can be; it contains no surprises.

It is not hard to find signs of the tin process in the human
organism. We may look upon it as the sculptor who works from
above downward, from the finer towards the denser. While the
copper process works enliveningly on circulation, etherealizes
nutrient substances in the final stages of digestion and helps to
merge them with the respiratory process, tin is active at the
opposite pole in helping the forms of the various organs to
coagulate out of the body’s colloidal fluids and condensing these
into the cartilaginous substance of the embryonic skeleton. Tin
builds dams to keep water in its place, as it does for example in
the formation of the brain. Hydrocephalus is an illness caused by
tin deficiency, and is often accompanied by a too soft condition
of the bones. In speaking of tin we do not, of course, mean the
substance, but its formative forces. The above facts clearly indi¬
cate the therapeutic use that can be made of high potencies of tin.

Tin is also used as a solder. What is the soldering process but
a joining of two pieces of metal with the help of tin? This points

TIN

directly to a further function of tin forces in the human organism.
Tin links bone with bone through the agency of the cartilage in
our joints, and on a higher level is active in the capacity of the
mind to link thought with thought in logical sequences.

Tin conjures forth colour in colourless plant extracts, inducing
coagulation in the substance. The brain is the physical counterpart
of the light-filled world of thought. Like the eye, which is formed
by light for the purpose of perceiving light, the brain is built by
thinking for the purpose of perceiving thought, and the Jupiter-
tin process is its agent.

Looking back into antiquity, we find a wonderful picturing
of this process in Greek mythology. Zeus-Jupiter is shown en¬
throned in the clouds, ruling over light and air. His throne of
clouds is simply coagulated water-vapour. Now mythological
beings are not simply personifications of nature-forces, nor is the
concept of divinity merely a glorifying of the nature-forces
before they were physically understood. Such a view of the
matter follows naturally from a materialistic world-conception.
But the truth is that the humanity of earlier times was guided by
a divine world. Only at about the time of Christ did this change,
for then these divine powers began to withdraw from man’s
surroundings and to enter the human soul and work within it.
What had been divine wisdom became the power of human
thinking. This thinking still lacks the capacity to see things in
their wholeness; it is still enmeshed in the chaos of the partial,
physical approach. The throne of Jupiter is no longer in the world
of wafting clouds, but in man’s brain, where the view is obscured
by physical objects. And when our thoughts arc not warmed by
the fires of enthusiasm they freeze to "grey matter’ and fall apart
in atomistic abstractions.

This is the fate of tin, too, on long exposure to freezing tem¬
peratures; it disintegrates. This seems like an illness, even an in¬
fectious illness, for if one scratches a piece of ‘healthy’ white tin
and strews ‘sick’ tin dust over it, a pustule appears and exudes a
grey powder. This phenomenon has been appropriately termed
‘tin pestilence’.

The t in-Jupiter process is thus the opposite pole of the copper-
Venus process.

169

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Lead

ad, which comes first in our list of metals, has the least

JL-dustre, a dull resonance and almost no conductivity. Out¬
wardly it is even plainer than tin. It Is heavy and dark grey;
one might almost call it gloomy, with a moribund gleam. It Is
completely moisturcless, with an even more negative relation¬
ship to water than tin has. Though soft, it is brittle and therefore
not malleable. Lead ore lacks the slightest moisture content, and
the soluble salts oflead crystallize with no water of crystallization.
As we have seen that water is the basis of all life, we can see that
lead’s heavy, gloomy aspect has a relationship to death.

But if we pick up a piece oflead, we are surprised to find it
feeling softer and warmer than one would have expected of a
metal. It even feels strangely oily. For all its plainness, lead
apparently possesses unsuspected qualities. And if one goes on to
make a closer study of it, one comes to know another, most
important side of lead which has nothing to do with heaviness :
the fire that lives hidden in its depths. Some lead ores show it
quite externally.

Though the chief lead ore, galcnitc, has lead’s typically gloomy
look, there is a whole series of lead ores whose bright colouring
betrays the fire within. Yellow, orange and red occur most fre¬
quently. Croconitc and wulfcnltc, the red and yellow ores, and
several others, sparkle as though fire itself had fashioned them.
White lead ore, cerussite, though a colourless white, brings
hidden fire to expression in the way it is shaped. It is built of
sheaves of needles, or is a network of glittering laminae. It looks
amazingly like bone structure. Thus lead unites two very strongly
contrasting forces: rigid heaviness and revivifying inner fire.

The fire-nature of lead is beautifully illustrated in an experi¬
ment which we will describe in some detail because it is generally
so little known. If we want to pulverize lead to a very fine
powder, wc have to work in a vacuum, for the powder would
otherwise ignite and gradually burn down to bright yellow ash.

Although this pulverizing is impossible on account of the

ryo

LEAD

sticky consistency of lead, there is another way of achieving the
same end and producing pyrophorus lead. The technique is as
follows. Lead citrate is put in a glass tube sealed at one end and
gently shaken till it settles at the bottom. The open end of the
tube is attached to a vacuum pump. The citrate is slowly broken
down with the heat of a small flame, while the vapour and carbon
monoxide thus generated arc drawn off by the vacuum. The end
product is metallic lead in the form of a fine powder.

When the tube is sealed with a glass cock, taken off the flame
and the pump disconnected, the lead can be kept for weeks or
months, provided the seal is tight enough. But the moment air
gets in, the lead bursts into flame and is gradually consumed.

The chemistry of lead, like that of tin, is very simple and
straightforward. Its lack of affinity to the lively chemical activity
of water renders it chemically sluggish. This quality makes it
excellent pipe material.

Bells made of bronze with a lead alloy ring with a warm depth
of tone. But impermeability to rays of energy such as those given
off by X-rays and radium is a special characteristic of lead and
makes it particularly well-suited to serve as a shield against their
destructive action.

Lead’s double nature, its dead weight counterposed to living
fire, together with its shielding properties, can easily be under¬
stood when we consider its cosmic source of origin: Saturn.

This planet has two characteristics which are at once apparent
to telescopic observation - its dark core and the bright ring that
encircles it. And its distant orbit encloses the whole planetary
system, sheltering it from cosmic radiation. We forget all too
readily that the life of earth and its creatures is made possible and
maintained in a carefully attuned balance of forces by the sheaths
that surround it. Earth has its hydrosphere, its air and warmth
mantles, and its ionized layers, and beyond these the planetary
spheres. The last and most important enclosure, which separates
the planetary system from the rest of the cosmos and makes it an
independent entity, is the Saturn sheath; or, we might say, the
lead process. And when forces such as X-rays and radium appear
in the earth sphere, it is lead again that protects us from these
deadly energies and enables us to live independently of them.

171

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Lead's protective function appears very clearly in the smelting
process. Lead ores are always found in conjunction with silver,
and the smelting process produces a conglomerate with a good
deal of silver in it. This is then heated, and the more volatile lead
goes off in smoke. The percentage of silver in the residue keeps
on rising, until finally there is only a mass of liquid silver mantled
in a film of lead, which protects it from contact with the air and
thus prevents spattering. When, finally, the lead skin becomes
too thin and tears {the silver "peeks out', as the smelter says), the
lead has done its job and the last of it goes up in smoke.

If wc look for the Saturn-lead process in the microcosm, man,
we come upon the same comprehensive functions. One of lead's
activities is building bone, which involves the death-process of
mineralization. The densification brought about by tin in the
organism is carried only to the stage of cartilage, which is still
plastic. It is lead that carries mineralization to its real conclusion,
which one might call a kind of death. But this death enables
man to be at home in the realm of gravity, as well as to assert
himself against it.

Bone-building is the final stage of the lead process in the human
organism. Man incorporates death into himself with his bony
structure. But at the heart of this mineralized precipitate of our
physical selves, at the core of what is most dead in us, we find
the scene of life's creation: the red marrow, where new blood,
new red blood corpuscles are made.

The lead process is thus linked with processes of death and
resurrection in the organism. On the one hand it lends itself to
the forces of mineralization active in shaping our bony frame¬
work, while on the other it supports independent consciousness,
enabling us to co-ordinate our perceptions and relate them to the
ego, the centre of each man s personal universe. The lead and
silica processes are similar in their influence on this functioning
of the senses, which is based on a constant breaking down or
dying. Disintegration is continually going on in us, particularly
in our nervous systems, but it is just because we are always ex¬
periencing partial death that we can become conscious beings.
At the moment of complete and final death an unimaginable
enhancement of consciousness occurs owing to the sudden

LEAD

setting free of so many formative forces from their bodily tasks.
Reports to this effect have been made by individuals who came
close to death but were revived. They speak of seeing a tre¬
mendous panorama of their whole life, such as cannot be ex¬
perienced normally.

The lead process is thus related to the most spiritual as well as
to the most material aspects of our being: to that maturity of
consciousness which manifests itself in the warmth of an all-
embracing human understanding. When the lead process within
us is thrown out of balance, we lose the firm footing of an ego-
directed soul life, as can be witnessed in the poor memory of
sclerotics or in the brittleness of bone and the failing senses of
old age.

The wide range of properties inherent in lead makes it a
valuable medicament in cases where, on the one hand, the
process of dcnsification proceeds abnormally, or on the other,
consciousness is disturbed in the ways just described. Used in
high potencies, it has given good results in the treatment of
various sclerotic and related conditions.

In ancient times, this twofold character of the Saturn-influence
was well known, Saturn was regarded as the representative of
death, of the forces responsible for aging, but equally of the
deepest attainable wisdom. The Greeks looked upon Chronos-
Saturn as the creator of time. But time harbours new beginnings
as well as endings. Time is known as the great healer, the over-
comer, who offers resurrection after every death.

It was natural to fear Saturn, for this border-guard who
constantly patrols the boundaries of our planetary system is also
the guardian of a treasure of ultimate knowledge, to be attained
only at cost of the greatest sacrifice. Suffering and loneliness are
awakeners of knowledge.

Lead is in a profound sense the final stage of a great cosmic
evolution.

It is clear that this way of looking at the world leads to a new
relationship to the substances of the earth that does justice to the
spirit variously active in them. We are not concerned with
merely reaffirming insights of an earlier time, but rather with
building new bridges to an understanding of the nature of sub-

173

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

stances. We can take literally Goethe's mature saying: 'All that
is fleeting is merely a symbol/

Even the physical planet Saturn is a powerful symbol of the
lead-Saturn process, with its characteristic twofold creativity, for
Saturn is made up of a core and an encircling ring. On every
level, Saturn builds both core and enclosure. It provides both
physical and spiritual bases for the ego and its 'self-contained'
world of individual consciousness.

In the bone-building process we come up against the mineral
world inside ourselves. In sense-perception wc confront matter
in the outside world. Both are boundary-experiences and are
guarded by Saturn. Here too he maintains his shielding character.
Present-day consciousness is precluded from looking behind
mineral matter: we come up against its resistance.

In our inner life, also, we are shielded by our senses from
becoming aware of the deeper layers of the soul, which we are
normally no better equipped to deal with than wc arc with the
energies set free by the disintegration of matter.

A striking phenomenon in this connection is that lead is the
only substance able to hold out unchanged against radioactivity.
Thus it proves itself to be the most stable and solidly resistant of
all earthly substances.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Iron

As we have already shown, metals play virtually no part in
Lbuilding up the earth, since they are merely threaded
through the body of the earth in veins and give it a certain life.
This holds true of iron, too, whether it occurs in larger compact
masses (e.g. at Erzberg in Styria, where a whole mountain of
it is gradually being reduced in open-face mining operations)
or in the small quantities found scattered all over the earth. If
minerals such as lime, granite or clay have a brownish tinge, this
comes from an admixture of tiny iron particles. There is scarcely
a spring, a river or a lake without a detectable amount of iron
in it. Its universal presence in the earth reminds us that it also
permeates the human bloodstream. It is the only metal present
there to an appreciable degree, and is one of the most important
in the body, although it cannot be called a true body-building
material.

Fig. 27

The spiral as a resultant of spherical and radial forces.

175

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

The universality of iron makes for great variety in its ores, A
morphological study reveals a notable structural variety, with
regard not only to the shapes of single crystals, but to the overall
crystalline arrangement or patterning. Two dynamic tendencies
stand out. On the one hand there is a distinctly radial structure,
apparent especially in marcasite. On the other hand there is a
tendency to the tangential in certain spherical formations such as
hematite, Iimonite, and the like. Spirals result from an interplay
of these two dynamics.

One would expect to find iron ores in which spherical and
radial tendencies have combined to make a spiral. And we do
find them. Wonderful spiral forms are to be seen in many samples
of sidcrite, and the so-called iron rose (Eisenrose) owes its spiral
pattern to the same combination of forces.

Some may wonder whether the radial structure of marcasite
is the product of centripetal or centrifugal forces. But when we
observe its spherical surface and note that it often has a hollow
centre or is filled with some other kind of stone, such as lime,
we realize that only a radial force working from a periphery in¬
ward could have shaped it thus. Considering, moreover, that
meteors (and marcasite must be of similar origin) are to be
thought of as cumulative accretions, it becomes still dearer that
this ore could have come into being only through a centripetal
dynamic.

If we compare marcasite with antimonitc, which also has a
radial structure, we can clearly see the contrast between the
centripetal and centrifugal forces working in them. The anti-
monitc crystal radiates out from a centre, and is easily recognized
as the product of centrifugal forces.

The spiral tendency always arises when time enters space and
develops towards a centre. The fact that this dynamic shows up
so clearly in iron ores points to the fundamental role played by
the iron process, for it transforms spherical forces quite unrelated
to the laws of earth into radial forces working towards a centre.
Or wc can say that the function of iron is to help cosmic, weight¬
less elements to enter the sphere of gravity. This is a characteristic
of iron to be found at every level of its functioning.

The same dynamic operates in the strange phenomenon of the

176

IRON

Fig. 28

Radial, spherical and spiral form-tendencies of iron-ores.

formation of meteors and their entrance into the atmosphere*
The cosmic iron process of the Mars sphere can be seen at work
here, right down to physical manifestation* Iron is the only sub¬
stance which makes visible in an archetypal picture the incar¬
nating force during its spiral descent, for the path followed by
meteors is indeed a spiral, the result of interacting radial and
spherical forces*

The following phenomena serve as further illustrations of the
functioning of iron as a carrier of incarnation forces* Iron has the
closest connection with magnetism* Iron filings strewn in a
magnetic field quickly arrange themselves along the lines of the

Hg, 29

Formative forces radiating inwards and outwards*
177

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

flow of force between the poles. This is a phenomenon reminiscent
of the Chladnian tone figures mentioned above in connection
with the ordering force inherent in music. It almost seems as
though a like force resides in both music and magnetism. But
we have to remember that magnetism works out of subterranean
depths of earth, and that iron is almost the only substance - to¬
gether with the condensing force of electricity - that reacts
strongly to these sub-earthly forces.

Iron, then, conforms to the force-patterns of the earth’s
magnetism. This conformity comes to good use in the compass
needle that helps us to orientate ourselves in space. But we need
inner orientation, too, and inner adjustment to spatial forces. It
is the iron in our blood that enables us to anchor our personalities
in our bodily processes. Without iron we would quite literally
lack "presence of mind*. Our human egos give our lives their
orientation; the iron in our blood serves as a mediator, relating
the ego to the spatial dynamics of the earth. It provides a basis
for our earthly activity and creativity. Do we not say of a deter¬
mined person that he "has steel in his blood’?

These characteristics have corresponding applications in
therapy. Iron in high potencies is a good remedy for persons who
have trouble in mastering their bodily processes. We see this
difficulty in cases where processes of a certain kind drive the
personality out of the body or cause a diminution of conscious¬
ness, as happens most signally when the sulphur forces of diges¬
tion gain the upper hand. We have often called attention to the
fact that consciousness can develop only by depressing biological
activity; that it rests upon a death process. The torpid state in¬
duced by the sulphurous nature of the digestive process is con¬
tinually being lightened up by iron as it beats down the sulphur
process.

We see a corresponding process in the mineral world in iron’s
readiness to combine with forces of the earth’s depths and with
the fire-related sulphur to be found there. It is to this we owe the
harmonious pentagon-dodecahedron form of iron pyrites, the
most perfect of all crystal shapes.

Iron is also virtually the only metal with a close relationship
to carbon, ‘earth substance’. Carbon is not only the basic building

178

t ,

IRON

stuff of alt organic matter but plays a role in the mineral kingdom
too, as for example in lime (calcium carbonate}* It is significant
in this connection that it is precisely iron which has such a close
bond with carbon, combining with it, dissolving or otherwise
transforming it*

Everyone knows that our machine-age civilization owes its
very existence to this relationship of iron to carbon* Pure iron is
soft and malleable, and therefore unsuitable for use in machine
parts* But in a molten state it greedily absorbs carbon, which
dissolves in it as readily as salt in water. The product, on solidify¬
ing, is no longer soft; it has become hard, brittle cast-iron. The
carth-substancc, carbon, that now permeates it lends iron hard¬
ness and permanence of form.

Steel is an intermediate stage between malleable iron and cast
iron. It is not as hard and brittle as cast iron is, but tends, on being
poured, to try to resume its original form - which means, in
effect, that it is clastic.

When carbon is dissolved in white-hot molten iron and the
mixture is solidified by sudden cooling, the resultant iron has
tiny diamonds distributed all through it* It is highly stimulating
to live through in imagination the transformation of dark
carbon into these rare and shining jewels. Is it not conceivable
that man’s spirit might some day learn to use the forces of iron
to change the earthly nature of his physical body into something
far more related to the realm of light?

The iron processes in the blood are rhythmical, reminding us
that life is so to speak elastic, like steel* But when the forces of
embodiment work too strongly and life tries to exceed its
normal span, the vital processes gradually become mummifying
forces. Some of the industrial uses to which iron is put will serve
as illustrations.

Iron is used for tanning leather. But is leather not mummified
skin? In earlier times almost all tanning was done with oak bark.
The entire habitus of oak clearly indicates that an iron process is
at work here. This gnarled and stubborn tree, with its hard wood
and the thick, tough bark that is a perfect picture of mummifica¬
tion, certainly expresses the nature of iron* Trees, too, reflect
the great fundamental processes that weave the tapestry of

179

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

nature before they come wholly to rest in substances* And wc
must emphasize again that it is not the substance iron wc refer
to here, but rather the dynamic properties of iron active in the
tree’s life-processes.

A few decades ago, tanners switched from oak bark to chro¬
mium salts, especially in tanning vamp leather. More recently
still, iron salts themselves came into use. We will go later into
the reasons for this use of chromium; it is a ‘brother’ of iron and

very like it in several respects.

All this indicates that iron becomes a mummifying agent
when it overshoots the mark* We have already pointed out that
the substance iron is almost universally distributed. The same
universality appears in its chemistry*

Apart from those qualities which have been described as
relating iron to forces purely of the earth (magnetism and carbon),
when we examine it from the chemist’s standpoint we find it
possessing traces of other properties noted in connection with our
discussions of copper, lead and tin. For water, air and fire forces
are reflected in iron’s basically earthy nature.

In our discussion of copper wc spoke of the power it has to
organize the wratcry element into shape and colour; and of the
versatility shown in its lively chemical activity. Ferrous sulphate
(generally known as green vitriol) is quite similar to blue vitriol
in many respects. It has beautiful green crystals that contain
some water. And as in the case of blue vitriol, green vitriol loses
its water content on being heated or even on exposure to dry
air, crumbling to a white powder* The green crystalline form is
re-established in the presence of moisture.

We also find in iron the tendency to form complex salts. Iron
and cyanide in combination form a group of substances, known
as red and yellow potassium prussiatc, which are the source of a
highly coloured material called Prussian blue. Iron cannot be
detected in these compounds by ordinary chemical analysis. We
might say it acts anonymously in them. Many scientists have
tried to explain their complex and peculiar structure and to de¬
cipher their true nature. Werner, for example, proposed half
and quarter valencies as a possible solution of the problem. But
the fact remains that iron behaves like copper here, effecting all

180

IRON

sorts of unexpected transmutations. But this is just what makes
it a healing element in nature and in the human organism, for it
absorbs cyanide, which is poisonous, and changes it surprisingly
enough into harmless Prussian blue. As the digestive process
constantly produces cyanide-likc poisons, wc would be subject
to poisoning at every meal were it not for the activity of iron
in our blood, rendering the poisons harmless.

Iron's kinship with tin show's up in the following phenomenon,
where light and air processes play an important role. Tin brings
out latent colour, and is therefore used as a mordant in dyeing
silk and wool. Iron can be used for the same purpose, though it
docs not produce the bright, shining colours that tin mordants
do. Iron favours, earthier, darker shades, the so-called ‘fashion¬
able’ colours. This shows, nevertheless, that, like tin, it has the
capacity to organize light and darkness into colour.

We can go a stop further and study iron’s relationship to light
and air through its behaviour in different valencies. We described
in what sense valencies are an expression of musical qualities of
matter, being subject to the law of simple and multiple propor¬
tions. There are bivalent and trivalcnt forms of iron. In our terms,
then, iron sings in seconds and thirds. It is fascinating to observe
that iron’s singing is influenced by the intensity of light. Direct
sunlight changes trivalcnt into bivalent iron, or, in other words,
makes it change suddenly from singing thirds to singing seconds.
This process is applied in making photographic prints from a
negative. A complex cyanide compound is used. In the presence
of light it changes into a deep blue called Turnbull blue. The
familiar draughtsman’s blueprint is made in this way.

This change in valency, which can also be reversed under
certain conditions, is a characteristic of iron. Other substances
possess it to a certain but not at all comparable degree, especially
in relation to oxygen. This fact is of great importance in chemical
analysis. The reaction of permanganate of potash and a ferrous
salt, as the salts of bivalent iron are called, consists in the absorp¬
tion by iron of the oxygen present in permanganate of potash,
causing the deep violet colour of the permanganate solution to
disappear instantly. If the strength of the permanganate solution
is known, the quantity of iron can be calculated,

181

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

This oxygen absorption, with the simultaneous disappearance
of colour in the solution, is an impressive phenomenon if the
experiment is done as follows. A 10% solution of iron sulphate
is poured into a large glass cylinder so as to cover the bottom.
To this, a deep violet permanganate solution of about x% is
added slowly, with constant stirring. The deep violet disappears
on contact with the iron solution, and a huge amount of the
violet permanganate solution is needed to satisfy iron’s appetite
for oxygen. When it is satisfied, it expels the oxygen again under
certain conditions. The oxygen thus released is able to oxidize
chemical compounds such as hydrogen iodide, causing the iodine
thus produced to restore the colour.

i oFeS04 + 2KMn04 + 8H2 S 04 — $ Fc2(S 04)3 + K2 S 04 +
Ferrous Perman- Sulphuric Ferric Potassium

sulphate ganate acid sulphate sulphate

(Second) (Third)

2MnS04 +8H20

Manganese

sulphate

dccp-rcd-violet -> colourless

Fe2(S04)3 + 2HI « 2FcS04+ I2 + H2S04

Ferric Hydrogen Ferrbus Iodine Sulphuric

sulphate iodide sulphate acid

(Third) (Second)

colourless red (with starch blue)

This experiment gives a good picture of iron’s capacity to
bring air into motion. As we know, our breathing depends on
this capacity of iron in our blood. Iron sings thirds in red arterial
blood, which is air-saturated. It sings seconds in the blue venous
blood flowing back to the heart after giving up its oxygen. On
arriving in the lungs, it again takes up oxygen and changes back
to thirds.

If we observe this activity of breathing in our lungs, we can
hardly avoid the impression that the orbit of Mars, as it rhythmic¬
ally nears the earth and then moves farther away, is a cosmic
counterpart of the human breathing process.

182

IRON

A planet’s movement in space determines its sphere ot influence
on the earth. This influence rays in from a circumference deter¬
mined by the planet’s position at a given moment. We might
say that the planet is like a cell nucleus, dominating the surround-

Fig. 30

Expansion and contraction (breathing) of the Mars-sphere.

ing cell area. Mars similarly dominates the space which its path
circumscribes, expanding or contracting its sphere of influence
exactly as though it were an clastic cell membrane. The lungs
carry out the same movement as we breathe in and out, and our
power of speech results from it. We showed above that the chief
function of the iron process (or of the Mars sphere) is to bring us
down to earth. In this context, we can picture iron as the force
that conducts the musicality of the cosmos, Plato’s ‘harmony of

183

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

the spheres', down to earth and into man's organism, where it
finds its highest and most sublime expression in human speech.
Speech is a power which comes from the control and articulation
of sound by a sovereign and fully incarnated ego.

Finally, there is the question of iron being tinged with qualities
of lead. On the one hand it controls the ossification process that
brings us fully down to earth. On the other, it has lead's fiery
quality, flaming up towards the spiritual worlds, for it is practic¬
ally the only other metal besides lead that is capable of spontaneous
combustion when ground to the point of almost molecular
fineness. Many readers will be familiar with pyrophorous iron,
made by reducing precipitated powdered iron hydroxide with
hydrogen. Like lead, it can be kept for a considerable period if
oxygen is excluded, and then bursts into flames the moment it
comes in contact with the air. Is this warmth of iron not the very
same force that makes our blood run faster when we are ‘set on
fire' by enthusiasm?

A glance at history will show the important role iron has
played in man's evolution. In Roman times, during what is
generally known as the Iron Age, the human ego began to enter
fully into its earthly embodiment. Museums offer interesting
possibilities of studying the statuary of various periods. If we
compare the face of a Roman emperor with that of a Greek
philosopher or an Egyptian king, we are struck by the ego-forces
of individual personality which come to expression for the first
time in the Roman’s face. They are entirely, or almost entirely,
absent from the other two faces. An observer sensitive to such
things has the immediate impression that the eyes of sculptured
figures of earlier civilizations look right through one to something
far higher. An Egyptian gaze, though it looks right into us, does
so with an expression of such infinite remoteness that we are
overcome with a sense of awe, as though in the presence of the
eternal. There are individuals who feel positively uncomfortable
when they confront a smiling Pharaoh. But Roman emperors
seem just like ourselves, with their personalities clearly im¬
printed on their faces*

Perhaps we should allow one exception among Greek physiog¬
nomies - that of Socrates. His expression betrays the struggle of

184

IRON

awakening personality to the point of an almost agonized
grimace. Something in him is wrestling through to birth. His
countenance bears a certain resemblance to embryonic forms.
How arc we to understand this exceptional case? Just as Aristotle
was the pioneer of logical thinking, Socrates can be regarded as
an analytical sceptic who rejected divine authority when it was
already becoming a mere tradition. In doing so, he laid the
foundation for a later ego development. We might call him a
pioneer of personality.

Roman law is the first documentary statement of human per¬
sonality and of its relation to the physical environment. It
marked the historic moment when ownership was put on a legal
footing. Personal property was legally accorded such significance
that Roman citizens could bequeath it to whomever they chose.
Wills made their first appearance at this time. The birth of the
principle of individual rights was now really accomplished.

Thus the Mars impulse is not to be found only in the warlike
nature of the Romans and in their iron weapons (the Greeks had
still used bronze) ; it can be seen also in the whole trend of their
social life and culture. Their highly developed power of rhetoric
is another example of the same tendency. The Roman orator no
longer sought divine inspiration; he addressed himself to his
listeners’ insight and played upon their mood. This was often
done so cleverly and persuasively as to override decisions of the
Senate.

While the Greeks had hearkened to their oracles and heard the
gods speak through them, the Romans listened to orators who
depended on their own intelligence and expressed their own
feelings. These impulses reached a peak with the climax of
Roman civilization. Later, they collapsed, thus contributing their
share of darkness to the Dark Ages. Medieval armour grew in¬
creasingly complex and hard to handle. Elaborate devices were
required for hoisting knights into their saddles at tournaments,
and if they were unseated while jousting, they had to lie there in
the sand. This same awkwardness and decadence can be detected
in language. Official style in the Middle Ages produced absolute
monstrosities of phrasing.

The invention of gunpowder brought a sudden end to these

185

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

developments. Mars was dethroned. But the Mars impulse now
took over technology, and Mars became the inspirer of the
Machine Age.

We have seen how the Mars impulses at work in iron are
carriers of the forces of embodiment. We have shown also how
these forces lead to mummification if they become too active
and overwhelm the vital processes. The personality can also be
affected if driven to plunge too deeply into the body by the Mars
forces. Individuality then becomes denatured and crass egoism
results. Egoism makes irresponsible use of machines for its own
ends. Whether machinery proves a curse or a blessing depends
on man himself. It is a destructive force in the hands of materialists.
But if man rises to a recognition of his spiritual origin, the
machine will serve him and the social order as a friend.

186

CHAPTER THIRTY

Quicksilver

Quicksilver, the metal of Mercury, is as like iron in some
respects as it is opposite in others.

It is found in nature in the same state we are familiar with
from the use of mercury in thermometers: as a liquid metal. It
occurs in smaller and larger globules in the matrix rock, often in
the company of mercury sulphide, more familiarly known as
cinnabar. The globules tend to unite and form larger ones, which
shatter at a tap. Their liveliness is a wonderful sight. Quick¬
silvers ancient name, ‘Mcrcurius vivus\ is truly deserved. And
this mobility is demonstrable in many other physical and chemical
phenomena.

One of these is the narrow margin between quicksilver's
freezing and boiling points. It changes quickly from a solid to
the fluid or the gaseous state. It drops only 399°C. from the boil¬
ing point to freezing, as against gold’s 1,537°. Mercury’s quick
passage through the different states makes it akin to water, which
also exhibits a great variety of phenomena in the interplay of the
elements, producing steam and clouds, fog, rain, hoarfrost, snow,
and ice, and leading each over into the next. 'Hydrargyrum’, the
Latin name for quicksilver and the origin of the symbol Hg,
acknowledges this kinship.

Lively, liquid quicksilver is 'young’, compared with the other
metals. It has retained the fluid form of earlier conditions of the
earth and held out against ageing and solidifying. In the table of
metals it is abnormal for being a very poor conductor (ef. Chap¬
ter Twenty-five). It is only externally lively, not having yet
achieved the inner mobility of conductivity. When the tem¬
perature is lowered below the freezing point, however, its con¬
ductivity increases markedly. In this solid state it thus comes to
possess ail the properties which its position in the table of metals
warrants.

Quicksilver’s reactivity to warmth is especially notable. It
expands and contracts in exact proportion to the rise and fall of
surrounding temperatures. It is not a carrier of inner fire pro-

187

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

cesses, as lead and iron arc, for it simply reacts to changes in
temperature with speed, precision and agility.

Its most significant quality is its capacity to dissolve other
metals, making alloys known as amalgams. Only one metal has
the power to resist this amalgamation, and that, strangely enough,
is iron. For this reason, mercury is kept in iron flasks for storage
and transport. We need not be surprised at iron’s resistance.
Mercury did not participate in the last stages of earth’s densifying
and remained a fluid, while the force that leads most deeply over
into earthincss, transforming the cosmic into the telluric, the
spherical into the radial, is that of iron.

Now, if we compare mercury with iron, searching out their
likenesses and dissimilarities, we come upon a clue to mercury’s
globule-forming tendency: it signifies both a retaining of the
cosmic sphere-form and a leaning toward individualization.
Here we sec a perfect illustration of the opposite directions taken
by iron and mercury. Mercury’s splitting up into numbers of
small globules and its tremendous mobility are in the greatest
possible contrast to the consolidating power of iron. Iron carries
forces of embodiment which, if they go too far, lead to mummi¬
fication in the sphere of life and to egoism in the soul sphere.
On the other hand, quicksilver represents the force that combines
small entities into larger wholes, making one large globule of
many tiny ones. This is the basis of the capacity to amalgamate,
which, over-developed, ends in erasing identity.

Chemistry presents phenomena that well illustrate these mer¬
curial characteristics. The reaction of chloride of mercury with
potassium iodide precipitates a glorious red mercuric iodide. An
excess of potassium iodide, however, has a surprising effect : the
red precipitate disappears, leaving a clear, watery solution.

HgCt2

+ 2fU

Hgl2 +

2KC1

Mercuric

Potassium

Mercuric iodide

Potassium

chloride

iodide

(red precipitate)

chloride

Hgl2

+ 2KI

HgI4K2

Mercuric

Potassium

Potassium mercuric

iodide

(clear watery
solution)
r88

QUICKSILVER

Chemists call this strange association of elements ‘double-salt-
forming'. But this explains nothing and does not even describe
the nature of the occurrence, especially since the quicksilver here
can scarcely be detected by ordinary analytical methods. More¬
over, it takes up other substances, such as ammonia (Hg2ONH2I).
The phenomenon can be explained only by bringing the whole
nature of mercury into account. Its most characteristic chemical
trait is that of association, a feature already noted in our discussion
of its readiness to form alloys, or amalgams.

Quicksilver draws into chemical association substances that
otherwise show little affinity for one another. Sometimes there
is such tension in these large groupings of elements that the least
disturbance sends them flying apart. If mercuric chloride, for
example, is mixed with ammonia under certain conditions, a
highly explosive compound (Hg2NOH) is produced by way of
the so-called Millon base. Similar compounds result from the
chemical reaction of mercury with nitric acid and alcohol. The
product is mercuric fulminate (HgC2N202), an association of
dissimilar and conflicting substances which explodes at the
slightest tap. This makes it suitable for use in fuse caps for deton¬
ating explosives. An interesting point is that nitrogen, though
certainly essential to the explosion, lacks the power of combining
these heterogeneous elements. For that, mercury's associative
capacity is needed.

The god Mercury was the divine messenger whose mediation
connected earth with heaven. He was also the god of commerce,
thereby bringing men into association with one another. This,
too, can be harmful in excess. Nowadays there is a tendency to
form large cartels and amalgamations on all sides* Companies,
so aptly termed ‘societes anonymes' by the French, tend to lose
any personal character when they expand into huge concerns
and giant trusts. Excessive amalgamation dissolves the personal
element.

When ‘iron will' and the ‘mercurial temperament* work har¬
moniously together, they produce capable and well-rounded
personalities with social gifts. But imagine an excessively mer¬
curial temperament, with the capacity to organize and manipu¬
late large combines, and dominated as well by an egotistic will*

189

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

What a perfect constellation for producing a Kreugcr or a
Stavisky!

The god Mercury represented qualities which, in their finest
flowering, make for the building of true human community, but
they can also lead to an Armageddon if misused. And these
divine mercurial qualities in human nature are perfectly mirrored
in the physical and chemical properties of quicksilver.

The mercury process is a very important one in the human
organism. Any and every ‘amalgamation* process that goes on
there can be looked upon as mercurial. The term, of course, is
used here to designate a force - a force which, carried to the
ultimate point in nature, produces the metal quicksilver.

Two important functions of the human organism are easily
recognizable as mercury processes. One is digestion. After
nutrients have been broken down to a considerable degree by
secretions of the mouth, stomach and intestines, the homogenized
mass is absorbed through the intestinal wall into the lymph and
blood stream. In the course of this, an amalgamation of external
nature and the human self takes place. Digestion is thus really a
fusion of two spheres of energy which merge in the human
body-building process.

The second process takes place in the breathing organs, where
human nature and external nature also come together. Through
the air wc breathe we share in the atmospheric life of the whole
earth. All humanity breathes the same air, which enwraps all
nature. This fact can be recognized as the true basis of a feeling
for an understanding of nature, as well as of the communal sense
that breeds truly social conditions.

Even the build of the lungs is mercurial. They are like little
trees made of tiny hollow drops. Innumerable spherical spaces
thus form a common breathing surface.

We see the imprint of the mercury process on the organism
wherever glands built of cells function together as described.
Separation into droplets, out of which functional wholes are
built is the signature of the mercury forces everywhere. On the
human physiological level they control the life of cells. Cellula
liquefaction and proliferation arc both due to disturbances of
the mercury process, which normally maintains a state of

190

QUICKSILVER

balance between the total human organism and its single cells.

Some of the therapeutic uses that can be made of high dilutions
of quicksilver will perhaps be obvious in the light of the above
account.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Silver

In many of its properties, silver is just the opposite of lead.

Lead’s resonance is as dull as its lustre. It melts easily, can only
be cast, and is a poor conductor. Silver gives out the most ring¬
ing of metallic tones and gleams most brilliantly. It is very subtly
workable, melts only at high temperatures, and has the highest
degree of conductivity. The two metals occupy opposite ends
of the table of metals, like Saturn and Moon in the planetary-
order. The moon’s speedy orbit and ever-changing path give
silver an inner mobility. But silver manifests this trait quite
differently from mercury, as will be seen in the course of this
chapter.

The chemistry of silver paints the first strokes of its portrait
in the striking phenomenon of its mirroring capacity. Everyone
who has stored silver nitrate has certainly noticed a very fine film
of silver appearing on the glass walls of the container. The coating
gradually grows thicker, until finally it forms a real mirror. This
precipitation process can be hastened by various reducing chem¬
icals. The tendency to form mirroring surfaces is one of silver’s
ch ief eha r actc r i sties .

The chemical reactions of silver show the same tendency. It
reacts, for example, with chlorine to form white silver chloride.
Under the influence of light it throws off the chlorine with the
same energy with which it first attracted it, returning to its
former pure metallic condition. Finely distributed, it now ap¬
pears black. This process is the basis of photography. Photo¬
graphic plates are coated with an emulsion of white silver
chloride, which is sensitive to light. When light streams through
the camera lens on to the coated plate, the illuminated parts
react, while the rest stays unchanged. The process is completed
by developing, which gives us the negative with its black (silver)
outlines. The parts that were illuminated are now black, while
those untouched by light arc still covered with silver chloride in
its unchanged white. The fixing bath which the negative is now
given removes the silver chloride, so that the dark objects on the

192

SILVER

plate seem transparent, (A solution of sodium thiosulphate,
which dissolves silver chloride, is used for fixing,)

To get a positive print from the negative, the process is run
through again. Printing paper is now exposed to light, acting
through the negative, and given the same further treatment as the
first plate.

This, then, is how photographs are made: they could be called
mirrors of the past, A mirror process is certainly also involved
in their manufacture.

The Liesegang ring phenomenon helps to round out our
picture of silver and of the inner mobility that accounts for its
reproductive power. When a drop of silver nitrate falls on a glass
plate coated with chronic gelatine that has not quite hardened,
the silver reacts with the chrome. A round reddish-brown spot
of silver chromate appears. It spreads in all directions, not in the
even way an inkspot docs, but in wave after wave, each one of
which makes a concentric red-brown ring around the original
spot. What is characteristic here is the rhythmic repetition that
forms concentric spheres, where one might have expected to see
just a single sphere as the spot spreads out. There is an outflowing
motion with a rhythmical wave impulse, like the spread of a
musically vibrating sound. This is another example of the kinship
between chemical forces and music; the chemistry of a substance
is like an inner music that organizes matter into ordered patterns.

The Liesegang rings recall the concentric ripple patterns that
spread out in rhythmically expanding waves from the place
where a stone is thrown into still water. We might call both
reproductive.

When an object is reflected in a mirror, wc speak of a pictorial
reproduction, Wc also speak of photographic reproduction.
When wc stand between mirrors we see countless reflections of
ourselves, very like the concentric silver chromate rings in the
chrome gelatine. Ceaseless repetition and wave-like reproduction
of some motion or condition of matter are characteristic of the
silver force.

Reproduction means, in a narrower sense, the renewal ot
species in the world of nature* Just as the silver reaction described
above spreads and spreads in concentric circles, nature brings

T93

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

forth cycle after cycle of budding, germinating life, as species
reproduce their kind* And even in the single organism the same
living rhythm of growth goes on* The annual rings seen on cross-
sections of tree trunks are an expression of the same force that
makes Licsegang rings* Grains of starch seen under a microscope
or the cross-section of an egg reveal the same outflowing rhythm*

The silver process is the force responsible for all these life-
rhythms* We are referring here, of course, to the action of a
universal force that finds material expression here on earth in the
substance silver*

In this connection it is natural to find silver tending more than
any other metal to the colloidal state. A silver salt need only be
treated with a protein solution to produce pure colloidal silver.
We know that a colloidal substance can be described as being
neither completely fluid nor yet solid* It has a potentiality for
either state. This is an essential characteristic of the living* Our
blood, plant sap, and all other fluid carriers of vegetative func¬
tions, arc colloidal in character.

These silver forces arc active in all growth and body-building
processes in the human organism, and most strongly, of course,
where physical life is reproduced: in the sexual organs. The silver
process works on a higher plane in the brain, the organ that en¬
ables us to reproduce thoughts and to mirror the world in our
conceptual life*

The properties of silver as an earthly condensation of moon
forces indicate its therapeutic uses. It proves valuable as a medica¬
ment in the treatment of regenerative and reproductive dis¬
turbances, providing valuable support for recreative functions
and permeating the fluid organisms with its vital rhythms. Its
many-sidedness leads to its use in a great variety of other special
therapeutic applications*

just as lead brings the forces of Saturn lo manifestation, so the
silver process reflects the action of the moon, whose immediate
influence on all the rhythms in man and nature is everywhere
evident*

The rhythm of the tides is currently regarded as a product
mainly of lunar gravitation* This could be correct, although the
assumption leaves some difficult problems unresolved* In any

194

SILVER

case, there can be no doubt that the primary cause of tidal ebb
and flow is the moon’s law of rhythm, noted in all manifestations
of the silver process studied in these pages. We know that sea
water contains silver in the ratio of io mg. to a cubic metre. It
may be that silver acts as a focus for lunar influences, and as a
medium for transmitting moon forces and their rhythms to the
tides. And just as sea water rises and falls in accordance with the
laws of lunar rhythm, so is there a tide of sap in plants, both during
germination and in later growth.

Plant growth is accompanied by a rhythmic increase and de¬
crease of substances, a tidal emergence and disappearance of
matter subject to a monthly rhythm. Certain disturbed states of
consciousness, such as epilepsy and somnambulism, worsen or
improve with changes of the moon.

In some regions there are still farmers who cling to old tradi¬
tions and regulate the times of planting, harvesting and other
such farming activities by the moon phase. This could well be
called superstition, if the method were not proved right by the
author’s own observations and experiments. Modern man should
not depend on old traditions, but should rather investigate the
laws of life anew and then act rationally in accordance with them.
Now we might call silver a dense form of moonlight. It is a
substance very like the moon in brilliance and reflecting power.
The moon reflects the light of the whole universe. Starlight as
well as sunlight comes to us in moon reflection* We need hardly
be surprised that this dark satellite reflects the sun most obviously.
Like a true mirror, it always turns the same side toward us. Its
surface is very like that of a frozen flow of silver which has
"spluttered’ while getting rid of the quantities of air it absorbed
while in a white-hot state, and comes finally to resemble a
moon landscape sown with craters.

In ancient times the moon forces manifested in these pheno¬
mena were felt to be divine. Greek mythology attributes them
to Diana, or Artemis* One of her chief shrines was at Ephesus.
The statue of the goddess there shows every attribute of fertility.
The pupils of this shrine knew that the goddess ruled the cycle
of the moon and the various vegetative and reproductive pro¬
cesses in man and nature. Celebrating their rites by the light of the

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

full moon, they felt forces of emergent life streaming down to
earth. The forces of the new moon, on the other hand* were felt
as a stimulus to creative powers of soul and spirit. In glorious
visions they beheld the evolution of the aeons out of the creative
spirit of the universe.

Somnambulism is a strange, morbid modern echo of these old
experiences. Sleepwalkers go on highly dangerous expeditions
at full moon, as though their bodies were not subject to gravity.
They even seem to be drawn up out of the darkness of the earth
exactly as the plant world is, during the full moon phase.

At new moon, moonstruck individuals stay in bed, but often
have astonishing cosmic visions in their sleep, albeit mostly in
distorted and fantastic forms. Wc see in these abnormal cases the
tendency which moon forces have to alternate between physical
and psychic influences.

In Greek mythology this latter aspect is represented in the
virgin Diana or Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo, who - in
opposition to the Diana of Ephesus - is not portrayed as being
physically fertile. Hers is rather psychic and spiritual creativencss,
which is intensified when the moon is new. Sometimes she is
shown with a new moon crescent on her youthful brow. Unlike
Athene, who sprang in full armour from the head of Zeus, she
docs not picture the austere, illumined life of thought and a
striving for wisdom, but is rather related as goddess of the moon
to night, with its greater depth of feeling, its creative fantasy.

In the chemistry of olden times, Diana was the name for silver.
And just as this goddess has two aspects, silver is found in nature
in two different forms: in knobs reminiscent of grape clusters,
and in fine hair-like threads, sometimes known as ‘silver curls’.

196

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Gold

Gold occupies the middle position in the list of metals. Since
it is the sun metal, wc may expect to find it possessing all
the contrasting properties of other metals in a harmonious and
balanced form. As the sovereign and highest expression of the
world of metals, it also exhibits unique capacities.

Gold is most often found in a pure state, usually in a quartz
matrix. It almost invariably occurs as a 'pollutant1 - if one may
call it that - of pyritc. Pyritc, with its golden-glinting five-sided
dodecahedrons, always has some gold in it, and its very form
reflects tile twelvefold rhythm of the sun’s course through the
Zodiac. It is an interesting and significant fact that gold always
occurs very close to the surface of the ground. Gold miners know
that they find less gold, the deeper they tunnel. Atmospheric,
hydrosphcric and gcosphcric action sometimes wears away the
parent rock, exposing the gold. That is why it occurs in the sand
of rivers, seas and deserts. The Egyptians, for example, got their
gold from the Sahara and the Nubian Desert.

Gold is recovered by reducing the parent rock to sand and then
separating out the grains of gold in the age-old process known
as washing. This method, whether applied in its most primitive
form by the gold-panncr or in great technical perfection, rests
on the simple fact that gold is heavier than the ground matrix,
so that the latter can easily be carried off by a stream of running
water. Chemical recovery by means of chlorination and amalgam
processes is a thing of the very recent past.

The amalgam process makes use of the ability quicksilver has
to dissolve metals by forming amalgams: gold is simply dissolved
out of the rock by quicksilver. In the chlorination process,
chlorine perforins the extraction. Chlorine is the only chemical
agent other than cyanide capable of having an effect on gold.

The power gold has to resist virtually every sort of chemical
attack entitles it to be ranked among the precious metals. Only
a special mixture of concentrated hydrochloric and nitric acid,
such as produces nascent chlorine, has any effect on gold, con-

197

i 1

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

verting it into water-soluble gold chloride. This hydrochloric and
nitric acid mixture has long been known by the very suitable
name of ‘aqua regia’ (royal water).

To call gold the ‘king of metals’ is to use a figure of speech
that means little to the modern chemist. But we shall sec that a
closer study of gold and its less obvious qualities proves its right
to this exalted title.

Gold occupies the central place in the table of metals arranged
widi reference to such dynamic properties as lustre, resonance,
conductivity and malleability. Like the sun, which is the harmon¬
izing centre of the heavens, governing and ordering the curving
paths of the planets, gold is an expression of the harmonizing
force in man and nature. Gold’s aristocratic nature keeps it free
of entanglements and enables it to mediate between extremes. If
gold were to form chemical bonds with all sorts of other sub¬
stances, it could not rule over them as king.

How impressively the changes of colour which gold undergoes
in its various metamorphoses reveal its all-embracing, universal
nature! The metallic gold we are £• niliar with in ornaments and
tableware has a warm lustre, like a sunny latc-afternoon in
summer-time. When it is hammered into paper-thin gold-leaf.

however, it becomes translucent and turns a glorious emerald
green against the light.

Goethe’s theory of colour can help us understand what this
phenomenon signifies. Goethe pointed out that pure yellow and
pure blue are the colours most closely approximating to light
and darkness, and arc thus polar opposites. Red and violet arc

intensifications of these poles. Green is their harmonizing. The
earth’s green vegetation which the sun conjures forth is the
harmony of light and darkness, sky and earth, in living matter.
This could explain why gold occurs right at the surface of the
ground, where earth and cosmos are evenly balanced. Summer’s
glorious display of green foliage seems conjured forth in light’s
transformation by the sun-gold process. Everyone knows what
a soothing effect green has, both out of doors and in green-
painted rooms. Green stands calmly poised between red’s aggres¬
siveness and the nostalgic yearning, the solemnity, the exaltation
of blue-violet.

198

GOLD

But there is another colour that creates a harmony between
red-yellow and blue-violet: purple. This is not a simple mixture
of two polar opposites, but a synthesis on a higher level. Purple
may be called a higher metamorphosis of green. Green sustains
and carries us. Wc stand on the earth’s green surface and fmd
security and peace of soul in green. It conveys a sense of earthly
balance. We can experience the polarity between red-yellow,
with its glowing activity, on the one hand, and on the other the
quiet remoteness and sublimity of blue-violet.

Over this lively interplay of colour, purple reigns supreme.
There is scarcely a human being who does not sense the majesty
of this indescribable colour. From earliest times it has been used
in the trappings of dignitaries as a mark of distinction and high
office. Kings and priests, as leaders through whom the divine
will spoke to humanity in times gone by, were robed in purple.
Purple seems to open a door through which a higher world can
enter human souls. But the purple we sec with physical eyes is
little more than a dark shadow of the true colour, which Goethe
called the heavenly child of the Elohim. He says: 'A great secret
begins to reveal itself to us when wc rightly conceive the moving
apart of blue and yellow, giving special attention and appreciation
to the intensification towards red, for opposites here bend back
towards each other, uniting in a third hue. The spiritual import
of these two separate and opposite beings begins to dawn on us.
And as wc sec them bring forth green below and red above’ (in
our designation, purple) ‘we shall scarcely be able to resist the
thought that below we behold an earthly colour; above, the
heavenly offspring of the Elohim.1

This pure purple is the colour gold assumes in the colloidal
state. The reduction of a watery solution of gold chloride makes
it possible to produce every shade of purple. The more it is
diluted, the more delicate and glorious the purple grows. A
colloidal solution of one part gold in ten million parts of water
has a marvellously subtle purple tinge that approaches peach-
blossom and is like the indescribable bloom in healthy children’s
cheeks.

Gold-purple was used in the Middle Ages for staining glass.
The glorious purples that shine with all the magic of a long-

199

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

forgotten art from old church windows, such as those at Chartres,
were made of this gold-purple* Present day glass-stains derived
from gold are not to be compared with the medieval product*
The world-embracing power at the heart of the universe was
experienced by the ancients as the Sun-Spirit. Zarathustra and
his followers called this being Ahura Mazdao, the great aura of
the sun. Initiates of olden times knew that in the course of
evolution the Sun-Spirit would leave the sun and link himself
with the destiny of the earth. It is significant that the Egyptians
mourned their sun-god Osiris, for they were no longer able to
behold him in the sun. This fact was symbolized in the mytho¬
logical picture of the dismemberment of Osiris by his brother
Typhon. The Greeks venerated in Apollo only one aspect of the
Sun-god, whose spirit had meanwhile drawn closer to the earth.
This explains why Zeus, or Jupiter, the father of Apollo, reigned
on Olympus in his stead. And the sun-hcro Baldur also passed
from the consciousness of the Teutons; the twilight of the gods
set in because man could no longer reach the inspiring forces of
the universe in the world outside him. The Sun-god incarnated
on the earth as Christ. This event was experienced by Celtic and
Germanic initiates in their Mysteries, as well as by the few people
who witnessed it in Asia Minor. Even the Finnish Kalcvala con¬
tains a reference to the Son of the Virgin. At this turning point
in human history there took place a great transformation, where¬
by the cosmic forces that had guided man became the innermost
powers of his soul - conscience and reason, the basis of capacities
to be developed in the future. The Teutons, especially, felt a
conviction that the darkness of the twilight of the gods would
be followed by a new epoch, Widar stamps out the power of
the Fenris-wolf with a shoe made from pieces of leather given
him by men who had worked together. Out of work, and par¬
ticularly work in community, will flow the forces for remaking
the earth. Can we conceive a more magnificent vision of man s
future capacities?

Such forces spring from the heart, the central organ of the
human body. Here is to be found the wellspring of all harmon¬
izing currents, the strength that balances polarities, the fount of
healthy social feelings. The heart may be destined to play a more

200

GOLD

important part in future developments of consciousness than wc
can imagine today* Wisdom that is golden - in other words,
imbued with the forces of the heart - will be needed to bring
the affairs of earth into balance and harmony -

As the sun affects the development of physical life, so has gold
affected the history of man* In ancient times gold was held
sacred, for it was looked upon as belonging to the highest gods.
In ancient Egypt, the private ownership of gold was forbidden.
Gold was kept in the temples, and priests and kings as earthly
representatives of gods carried it during ritual celebrations.

Not long ago a gold helmet that is probably the oldest golden
treasure ever found was discovered in Ur of the Chaldees. A
vehement controversy arose over the possible uses of this helmet.
After what has been said above about the character of gold, it
should be clear that the helmet must have been a ritual object,
not part of a warriors armour* It carries a head-encircling sunlike
disc, probably meant as ail image of the aura which indicates
inspiration from the macrocosm.

Later on, when men began to hanker after the ownership of
gold, it was gradually degraded to a symbol of personal wealth;
the full extent of the curse that accompanied the plunge into
egotism fell upon it. Things have now gone so far that all the
gold has disappeared into the vaults of national banks, and pieces
of paper arc used instead of it. Is there not a striking parallel here
with the gradual change from divinely guided consciousness to
abstract individual thoughts, which are often as far removed from
reality as paper is from gold?

Gold will be freed from these fetters of expediency to the
degree that mankind works its way out of abstract thought to a
new and active consciousness. We saw the first steps being
taken in this direction when the gold standard was abandoned
and currency was based instead on real values created by human
industry and effort.

The properties of gold described above arc also apparent in its
use as a medicament when the various physiological functions
have got out of balance. It is especially valuable for disorders of
the heart and circulation.

Gold reminds us of the aluminium process, which it resembles

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

in its capacity to harmonize polarities. The quintessence of forces
of harmony exhibited by aluminium in precious stones appears
again in the precious metal gold, but in closer relationship to us.

vSpecial reference was made above to one gemstone, tourmaline,
which is seen in cross-section to have both green and purple
colours. These are the colours that reveal gold's all-embracing
character in the translucent green of gold-leaf and in gold-
purple. A tourmaline set in gold thus comes to seem especially
symbolic of harmony between earth and universe.

202

CHAPTER THIRTV-THREE

The Brothers of Iron

COBALT, NICKEL, CHROMIUM, MANGANESE,
TUNGSTEN, VANADIUM, PLATINUM

e have described the seven principal metals, but have not

VV yet mentioned a whole family of others which we all use
daily. The first thing that strikes us about metals such as cobalt,
nickel, chromium, manganese and the like is their relationship to
iron. They are all found in association with it Most iron ores,
and so-called fahl-ores in particular, invariably contain one or
more of these collateral metals. It is not always easy for chemists
to identify them in a compound, so closely related are they
chemically.

When we discussed the great difference between metals and
non-metals, we spoke of the Periodic System, in which no proper
place can be found for metals. The metals of the eighth group, to
which quite a few of these collateral metals belong, are particu¬
larly isolated; they are set off by themselves, with no relationship
to the system as a whole. It is not even decided whether nickel
should precede or follow cobalt in the list, as both have the same
atomic weight. The Periodic System would undoubtedly gain
in clarity and realism if the metallic elements wore eliminated,
as in the chart below. This would leave seven, instead of eleven,
scries in the system, and reduce its eight groups to seven.

The only metals which this arrangement would leave in group
five are arsenic, antimony and bismuth. These arc neither true
metals nor true earths, but their properties belong under the
heading of Group Five. Wc shall have more to say about them
in Chapter Thirty-four.

The connection between metals of the iron group is further
demonstrated by the relationship some of them have to magnet*
ism. Cobalt and nickel both behave like iron in a magnetic field.

The relation of all these metals of the iron group to carbon is
also like iron's in forming hard, brittle carbides that dissolve in
the molten metal. In the manufacture of steel, quite small addi¬
tions of these collateral metals are enough to produce varieties of

203

ROW

*o R

O U P
II

VII

VIII

H l

Li 7

Be 9

& 1 !

C 12

N i 4

O 16

F 19

(SI a 23

Mg 24

A 1 27

Si 28

P 31

S 32

Cl 35, s

K39

C a 40

Sc 45

Is 48

y x v x /a

7-5 1 V //I

' y z-//j

CrX

' 7 7 7 7 / s

>5 M n y

y ^ z z y z

x, r y ' / / " x / z/

56 Fe 59 N ? 59 Co

y - -f Z 7 £ - y .. j. z / /

/(aCu-/

.//////I

// 7 / / 77

/6S2n/,

wz.

r-r-rrr/-

>73 Ge >

/ / / /j

As 75

Se 79

Br 80

Rb 85

Sr 83

Y 89

Z r 9 1

z ' ' - /

/ 94 Nb /

.// / 7 / Z

> Z/z /

/96 Mo/

/ / /x Z Z

7 7 7 7 7 7

7 99 Tc /

/V 7 7 7/

/ z“ y . 7 ? 7 } s J f

101 Ru 103 Rh 106 Pd

/ZZZZZZZZ. ZZ.

126^/

Z7 / f / J

/ 1151 n V

/ S f S / /

/l1»

Sb 122

Te 12S

I 127

Cs 133

Ba 137

La 139

Lu 175

Ce 179

7 -• 7 v-

> 181 Ta /

/ z z z /J

VI 84 W 7

z z /z z /

y ' •’ - v

> 186 Re'/

S S S S S 7'

Z / ■■ > s / > / /

192 Jr 195 Pt

Z / / s y 7 / y y / / /

y\91 Au/

y s y / //

\o\

0204 Tl<

/ , ///

yr zz / y

0207 Pb/

O /T/Z

Bi 209

Po 210

At 211

Fr 223

Ra 226

Ac 227
Lw 257

Z//Z//Z//7.

1 1

y//y

zzzzz

yyj

lZZZA

AzzA

■zZZZZ

Fig- 3i

Periodic tabic of the elements (omitting the noble gases, Group O).

THE NATURE OF SUE ST A N CE

THE BROTHERS OF IRON

steel with special qualities of hardness, toughness and elasticity.
Chrome, nickel and tungsten steels and the like are known even
to the layman as materials possessing steel’s characteristic proper¬
ties in the highest degree.

Metals of the iron group can be worked like iron; they can be
either wrought or cast. They have almost identical qualities of
resonance and lustre. They conduct heat and electricity to the
same degree. The following table, in which the conductivity
figures of this group can be compared with those of the seven
main metals, illustrates this plainly:

Conductivity of

Warmth

Electricity

Speed

Silver

100

Moon

392

Copper

Venus

Mercury

(68)

(76)

Mercury

Gold

Sun

Iron

17'

Cobalt

Nickel

Chrome

O OO
e-i

► Mars

Manganese

Platinum

Tin

Jupiter

Lead

Saturn

These conductivity figures make it plain that we have to dis¬
tinguish several secondary metals from the seven principal ones,
and that the former are connected with iron as though by family
ties.

Now why docs iron have so many brothers?

It has been shown that the iron forces work inward from the
periphery of the cosmos towards the centre and arc agents of the
dcnsification that prevails on earth. We came to know the Mars
process as the force that makes incarnating possible. Thus there
must always have been a stronger than usual bond between the
earth and Mars, even before the earth became a solid body. If
this is true, we might suppose that primal Mars substance was
deposited on the earth when the paths of the two planets crossed.

205

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

This Mars substance is not to be imagined as being in the present-
day material state, but in the much finer one suggested by our
term Iron process'* This substance must have been thoroughly
exposed to the various forces of the earth, which would then
have brought about a variety of changes in it. We will try to
read the nature of these changes from a study of their products,
the metals we have called "brothers of iron'.

COBALT

A study of cobalt suggests that it is an even earthier form of
iron than iron itself Like iron, it reacts to magnetism, forms
carbides with carbon, and has the same chemical reactions* But
it has other aspects which indicate that its bonds with the earth
arc stronger.

Cobalt's ores and salts are both tinged with a dark and melan¬
choly shade of blue-violet. It has less affinity to water than iron
has. Red cobalt salts give off their water of crystallization on
contact with dry air and turn dark blue. This makes it possible
to use a solution of cobalt salts for invisible ink. When the paper
is warmed, the writing turns a visible blue. Cobalt salts ate also
used to make weather-indicator mannikins* Their treated clothes
turn a darker blue, the drier the air becomes.

While cobalt salts are chemically more mobile than the salts of
iron, cobalt is more resistant as a metal. Iron objects such as the
bonnets of motorcars can therefore be protected with a thin
cobalt plating.

Now what was the origin of cobalt?

In the beginning, before the earth became a dense material
planet, It teemed with flowing currents of awakening life. Men
of olden times experienced this non-embodied life as a vivid
world of many sorts of nature-spirits. The mythology of the
Greeks and more especially of the Celts and Teutons is full of
accounts of beings that rule over nature from behind the scenes,
German fairy tales arc another example* They are not to be
lightly dismissed as primitive entertainment for die very young
and undeveloped, but are rather picturizations of real facts. They
take us into the realm of gnomes or koboids, water-sprites or
nixies, elves or air-sprites, and fire-beings, also known as sala-

206

THE BROTHERS OF IRON

manders. These are the beings whom men saw in pictorial vision
weaving the tapestry of nature.

We moderns are inclined to relegate these fairy-tale creatures
to the realm of fantasy or to call them personifications of forces
at work in the natural world. Is it not at least quite as logical to
speak of forces as expressions of the activity of nature-spirits?
Shepherds, peasants and woodmen who live in closest touch with
nature (especially in far northern lands, where human beings
alone with nature and undisturbed by such products of civilization
as the radio and cinema, preserve deep-going bonds with nature
and real simplicity) still testify in many ways to the reality of
these legends. Miners and foundrymen of the Middle Ages were
very familiar with the problems caused by secondary metals in
the forging of iron, and in their simplicity (or wisdom) attributed
these to the interference or activity of kobolds and nixies. Cobalt
and nickel are two of the metals named after this association.

Cobalt, then, really means kobold. The kobolds that gave the
metal its name are also known as gnomes, dwarfs and carth-
spirits, and are always pictured as having to do with the earthy
clement and living deep inside the earth. They are said to work
veins of ore, collect precious stones and metals, chip away at
rocks, prepare the soil for plants and work around their roots.
They are pictured as very clever fellows, especially at calculating
and reckoning. Sometimes they tease and torment human
beings, but often they help them. Of melancholy temperament,
they yearn most movingly for daylight. Little red jackets are
their special joy.

Cobalt may thus be termed an iron metal with a gloomy,
melancholic tendency, even more deeply related to the earth
than iron is - in short, iron that has gone beyond itself.

NICKEL

Nickel is like iron that has gone further in a nixie-direction;
in other words, has come under the influence of water-sprites.
Even the quality of its lustre recalls the reflection from a watery
surface.

All the nickel salts are a glorious deep-sea green. Like copper
salts, they contain a large amount of water of crystallization, and

207

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

can easily be dissolved into beautiful green fluids that make one
think of deep Alpine lakes.

The similarity to copper is found also in nickel’s tendency to
form complex salts. The addition of ammonia to nickel-salt
solutions produces a green nickel hydroxide precipitate, A
further addition of ammonia dissolves this again into a glorious
sapphire blue liquid* There are other brothers of iron capable of
forming similar complex salts, but with nickel the colour aspect
is so outstanding that one is reminded of the Venus nature* Again,
both nickel and copper are ductile.

Nickel takes its name from the water-sprites called nixies, or
sometimes undines. These beings are described as the guardian
spirits who watch over rivers, lakes, ponds and springs* They arc
active also in the green sap of plants where they stimulate nature’s
growth processes.

Nevertheless, nickel is a true member of the iron family. Like
iron, it is magnetic. It dissolves carbons, forming carbides. These,
alloyed with iron, make nickel-stcel, a particularly tough metal
used in the manufacture of gun barrels and other articles where
toughness and resilience are prime requisites. Nickel-steel is
resilient rather than hard; it can be stretched to twice its normal
length without breaking apart.

Nickel shares with cobalt a greater degree of resistance to
chemical corrosion than iron has. A coat of nickel-plating makes
the surfaces of metal objects relatively invulnerable* We shall
find this property increasingly enhanced as we go through the
list of iron-mctals*

The process wherein nickel is used for hardening oils rests on
a similar property. Fluid oils are changed into solid fats by using
very finely ground nickel. The nickel itself is not affected by the
reaction; it merely supplies the necessary chemical energy. Pro¬
cesses of this kind arc called catalytic and the agent is called a
catalyst. This property, too, becomes increasingly marked as we
go through the list of iron-metals from nickel to chrome, man¬
ganese and platinum.

The general impression given by nickel is one of a Mars sub¬
stance that has taken on something of the copper nature through
its relation to water-spirits, always servants of Venus. Its catalytic

208

THE BROTHERS OF IRON

power shows that it has considerable free chemical activity; but
its other qualities, as a member of the iron group, it has taken a
further step down towards hardening.

chromium

Chromium, too, reveals its kinship to the iron family. It is
always found in conjunction with iron. Chromite (chromic iron
ore) is the most important source of chromium.

Like iron, chromium dissolves carbon and combines with it to
form carbides. Alloyed with iron it produces the chrome-
steel famous for its hardness. Thus it represents another down¬
ward step towards sclerotization.

The Jupiter influence is more marked in chromium than it is
in iron, in the sense that certain tin qualities are more in evidence.
We have described how tin organizes light and air, conjuring
forth latent colour as it does so. Tin is thus used as a mordant
in dyeing woo] and silk. Chromium has the same capacity. Where
iron makes only a modest showing as a mordant, chromium has
everything required. It plays an important part in madder or
alizarin dyes. The colours it produces have a somewhat darker
tone than those produced with tin mordants. This is only to be
expected, since chromium is a relative of iron and hence tends to
iron's earthy qualities. This may explain why we find in chrom¬
ium the fixed colours of its salts - chrome yellow, chrome red,
and so on.

Cobalt was pictured as the result of the working of gnomes on
iron, nickel the result of a similar activity by water-beings.
Chromium can be recognized as iron that has undergone a trans¬
formation at the hands of sprites who are at home in the airy
element. They arc called sylphs or elves in fairy-stories. There
wc find descriptions of how these beings live in wind and weather,
m the streaming currents of the atmosphere while accompanying
birds in flight. The bird of Jupiter, the kingly eagle, was said in
olden times to be seeking out its master’s throne in its flights
through the sunlit realm of clouds. In the sense that water-sprites
work hand in hand with the Venus forces active in the watery
clement, air sprites or elves may be called attendants of Jupiter.

The properties of chromium make it suited for use in tanning,

209

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

which we have called a mummification process. The rapid
tanning that can be carried out with chromium shows how
particularly prone it is to atrophic states.

At first glance, this aspect of chromium seems quite out of
keeping with the airy lightness of bird flight. But the same
opposite aspects are to be found in birds themselves, where the
sclerotic tendency reaches a high point, while at the same time
they are master of the air’s free realm. A bird’s foot is scarcely
more than skin and bone, and its whole organism is atrophic.
The process that in man effects the head only is exemplified in
the whole bird : it is essentially a head-creature, with its digestive
system as a kind of appendage. The human head develops
consciousness at the expense of vegetative processes; in the same
way the bird develops flight and song.

Chemically too, chromium shows more leaning to atrophy
than either nickel or cobalt does. This means that it is more resist¬
ant to invasion by chemical agents and the atmosphere. Metal
objects can be protected against both by a chromium plating.

MANGANESE

Manganese is the ‘magnesium nigrum’ spoken of by Pliny.
Probably he used this term to call attention to its fiery nature. Its
ore is invariably found in company with iron; it has iron’s
relationship to carbon and makes a very hard manganese steel.
Apart from these iron qualities, it has a whole series of other
noteworthy characteristics which relate it strongly to the fiery
dement. Its salts range from rose~red to a flaming violet. Finely
ground braunite, a manganese dioxide occurring in nature, causes
alcohol and ether vapours to ignite. Manganese dioxide, which
in the form of pyrolusite is the commonest and most important
of manganese ores, is an essential of glass manufacture. Stained
and impure glass becomes clear and bright when smelted with
finely powdered pyrolusite. It is as though fire’s cleansing power
were active in it. Indeed, pyrolusite means Tire-washer’, This
substance, which certainly looks externally like a victim of
sclerosis in its resemblance to pieces of bumed-out slag, and yet
on the other hand has so strong a fire-forcc inherent in it, reveals
a decidedly Saturnian nature.

210

THE BROTHERS OF TRON

The sclerotic tendency of manganese comes out in still another
interesting phenomenon* Linseed oil is used in the manufacture
of oil-based paints because it rcsinifies in time and forms a hard
surface. It is therefore known as drying oil. Poppy-seed oil, used
in making the more delicate artists’ paints, is in the same category*
A surface painted with linseed oil alone takes weeks or even
months to dry* The addition of manganese in the form of fatty
acid salts reduces the drying time to a matter of days or hours*
Manganese compounds arc therefore called siccatives, or quick-
driers, and it is interesting that when added to colours they give
them an especially warm lustre.

In the animal kingdom, insects show the same pronencss to
desiccation, together with the same relationship to warmth.
Sclcrotization can go no farther than it does in insects. Bees,
wasps, hornets, and the various beetle species are completely
dried-out forms; yet they have a special relationship to the
warmth element as it lives in air, in nature and in plants* Bees
are related to the blossom, wasps and hornets more to the fruit
element* Blossom and fruit arc the parts of the plant in which
cosmic warmth processes reach culmination* And there is a
latent but hercer fire in the poisonous stings with which these
insects are endowed.

The ancients saw the activity of fire-spirits as the underlying
reality of diesc fire-proccsscs. In fairy-tales and legends these
spirits are linked with blossoming, ripening and fruiting, as well
as with hospitable hearth-fires* One feels they might have
touched even as hardened a substance as manganese with their
fire-fingers*

TUNGSTEN

With each further step in our study of the iron family wc come
upon metals with increasingly marked hardening properties*
Tungsten, for example, began quite recently to play an important
role in the iron and steel industry. Alloyed with iron, it makes a
steel almost as hard as diamond* Unlike ordinary steel, it stays
hard even when heated to the red-hot point* This has made it
indispensable in steel- working tools. These qualities have earned
tungsten steel the name o t "noble steel* (Edelstahl).

21]

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

A related characteristic of tungsten is its invulnerability to
corrosion by acids, even aqua regia - as though it were a precious
metal.

Tungsten glows, on being heated, with a beautiful white light.
Because of its resistance to chemical change it has long been used
in the manufacture of electric light filaments.

VANADIUM

Vanadium’s relatedness to iron appears in many of its properties.
It always occurs in company with iron ores; small quantities of
it are found especially in the so-called ‘pea ores’ (oolithic limonite).
Strange to say, traces of it are often found in cultivated soils and
in the ash of grapes and oak-trees.

Like iron, again, vanadium has an affinity to carbon and forms
silvery white carbides. It is like tungsten in producing a steel
almost as hard as diamonds when alloyed with iron, and in being
used to make machine tools. Vanadium steel also ranks among
the ‘noble steels’.

PLATINUM

Platinum gets its name from the Spanish ‘plata’, meaning silver,
and one can indeed regard it as a dead form of iron imbued with
silver properties. Molten platinum spatters on cooling just as
silver does. When in a molten state it absorbs air, which it expels
again on solidifying. But its most outstanding characteristics arc
its non-corrosiveness and its catalysing action.

Anyone who has had to work with platinum containers -
when heating substances in platinum crucibles for instance - will
remember how carefully he had to protect the crucible from
the bright (carbon-containing) part of the gas flaane, for it be¬
comes brittle and fragile on exposure to it. This is due to the
heated metal’s readiness to combine with carbon. Platinum is
capable of only one other chemical change: it corrodes when
brought into contact with aqua regia. The carbide-forming
tendency of platinum is slightly reminiscent of its relationship to
iron.

Platinum is not only a first-rate catalyst - it is the catalyst par
excellence. Its most familiar role in industry is in che contact

212

THE BROTHERS Of IRON

process of manufacturing sulphuric acid* Sulphur becomes sulphur
dioxide on burning* To oxidize it further and make sulphur
trioxide used to mean putting it through complex and elaborate
processes such as the lead chamber process. Ever since the catalytic
effect of platinum became known, platinum has been used,
finely ground, as a contact material. Now oxidation of sulphur
in the manufacture of sulphur trioxide proceeds simply and
smoothly, leaving platinum itself quite unaffected by the reaction.

A further reaction which platinum’s catalysing action speeds
up considerably is that of hydrogen and oxygen. So stimulating
is this action that spontaneous combustion follows. Those who
go back to the gas mantle era will remember the lighters that
used to be laid on the glass chimneys. A minute quantity of
finely ground platinum was sprinkled over the lighters, and the
gas ignited by itself on contact*

Many other reactions arc set off or speeded up with platinum
as the catalyst. This is especially so with organic compounds*

While on the subject of platinum as the outstanding catalytic
agent, it may be well to pause for a closer look at what catalytic
action really is* It has been mentioned that nickel, used as a catalyst
to harden oils, holds back from active material involvement in
the chemical process taking place, and simply supplies the
chemical energy that nickel radiates, so to speak. This radiation
is a feature of what wc might call the onset of sclerosis in the
substance itself*

We can get a better understanding of this process by studying
comparable situations found in nature s higher kingdoms. The
same polar development takes place, for example, in the nerves*
Nerves have a constant tendency to become sclerotic* They are
always in a dying state, thus freeing the life that is very loosely
attached to them. The life of thought and sense-perception is
built on this radiation offerees freed from the body. Nerves thus
present a polar contrast to blood, which is life-saturated and
wholly involved in the physiological processes and organic
functions of our material bodies* We also find a reflection of this
dying process in the nerves in the animal kingdom; it was dis¬
cussed in relation to birds and insects. The more atrophied and
sclerotic the body of an animal, the more freely the species-

213

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

intelligence functions. The animal intelligence active here is of
the species as a whole, not of the single creature. Bird migrations
and the organization of beehives and ant heaps are astonishing
examples. Nobody can really think that the individual swallow,
bee or ant possesses such wisdom. These animals are clearly units
directed by a superior intelligence operating not from within
each animal body but from outside it - an intelligence which
supports, directs and organizes the whole community of a flock
of migrating birds, an ant heap or a beehive.

This same phenomenon can be seen in the mineral kingdom
in the metals of the iron family, where the chemical function
withdraws from the metal itself to become active in its immediate
environment. Wc see this happening when nickel hardens fats,
when manganese is used as a drying agent to speed up the Testi¬
fication of oil paints, when it carries the oxidation of alcohol and
ether to the point of spontaneous combustion. In tungsten and
vanadium the tendency to atrophy becomes increasingly ap¬
parent, so that these two make effective catalysts. This develop¬
ment reaches greatest intensification in platinum and the platinum-
related metals such as osmium, iridium, palladium, and the like.
As a chemical substance, platinum represents a stage of almost
total atrophy and sclerosis. It is dead to the point of being unable
to participate in any chemical reaction whatsoever. It makes up
for this by being enveloped in what we might call an aura of
chemical energy that sets off and speeds up many chemical re¬
actions that would otherwise not take place. All the while, the
platinum itself remains materially unchanged. Wc might put it
thus: it pays with death for its noble capacity to bestow energy
on other substances.

We now understand why platinum is immune to chemical
attack and is considered a precious metal. But its aristocracy is of
an entirely different order from that of gold, which consists in
keeping other substances at a distance. Platinum cannot react
with other kinds of matter because it is dead. It belongs in the
ranks of precious or aristocratic metals because it has sacrificed
its chemical life.

So wc see that the iron family is a group of metals that follow
the main trend of the Mars metal further into the hardening

214

THE BROTHERS OF IRON

forces of the earth. As they do so, each brings to the fore the
properties of some other planetary sphere: Venus’s relationship
to water, Jupiter’s to air, and Saturn’s to fire.

One can, moreover, discern in the bro thers of iron the working
of a great law, which may be stated thus: Material hardening
frees the forces once spent to maintain life in all its suppleness,
and they reappear in a changed form as new qualities.

215

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The Childhood oj Metals

ANTIMONY, ARSENIC AND BISMUTH

Our study of the iron family has enabled us to see ill a new
light the nature of those metals with which modem times
bring us into daily contact* But chemists would say that the entire
list of metals has by no means been covered. Antimony, arsenic
and bismuth are still absent. They have an unusual and basic con¬
nection with the non-metallic minerals, and, as is clear from a
look at the Periodic Table, it is bard to know whether they should
be described as no longer metals, or not metals yet. The following
account will clarify what tins means in the various individual
cases.

ANTIMONY

Antimony has properties that are in certain respects the exact
opposites of those of the iron family. This comes out in comparing
iron ores - marcasitc and sidcrite, for example - with antimonite.
Antimonite, in the form of antimony pyrites, is the most im¬
portant antimony ore.

Antimony is diamagnetic. This means that instead of aligning
itself as iron docs, with the lines of the earth's magnetic current,
an antimony needle points at right angles to it. It is as though
antimony were trying to hold magnetism at bay, to get away
from it. This is borne out by the following phenomenon. When
antimony in solution is electrolytically precipitated, it appears on
the electrode in a modified metallic form as so-called explosive
antimony, a substance that explodes on exposure to heat or
friction.

Both phenomena suggest that antimony does not like being on
the earth* As antimonite, it assumes the typically lively radiating
form of cosmic forces (cf. fig. 29), and it rejects the dark forces of
terrestrial magnetism. When ail electric current forces it out of
solution and into the form of a metallic precipitate, it reacts with
extraordinary violence and wrests itself free of the fetters of this
earthly form by exploding.

216

THE CHILDHOOD OF METALS

Hoarfrost, with its myriad tiny points and needles, shows the
activity of the antimony-process in the atmosphere* But how
does the hoarfrost take shape?

We know that when the skies are clear the air is permeated
with transparent water vapour in the finest state it can assume,
the gaseous. When sudden cooling of the upper layer causes this
fine vapour to condense, it skips the fluid state and assumes the
form of countless tiny ice-needles. This is the origin of the
feathery cirrus clouds. When this process takes place close to
earth, icc-nccdlcs form on every convenient point, ridge and
slope, precipitating what we call hoarfrost. What is involved
here is a sudden rather than a gradual condensation of water
vapours - so sudden as to bring about immediate solidifying. This
is why hoarfrost is deposited in the ray formation we are familiar
with in cyrrhus clouds.

Cumulus clouds form in the middle atmospheric belt. Here,
cosmic radiation is balanced by the centripetal formative forces
of the earth. This explains why sphere-shaped drops of water are
to be found here, rather than clusters of rays. A tendency to
spherical forms is the dominant characteristics of the cumulus
cloud* When formative forces balance forces of buoyancy so
perfectly that neither air nor water gains the upper hand, their
interaction produces colloids - not in this case a mixture of the
solid and the fluid, but of the fluid and the aeroform. Mixtures
of the latter type arc called aerosols, the former hydrosols.

If the balance is upset and centripetal formative forces gain the
upper hand, the drops of water start to swell and rain ensues;
cumulus clouds turn into rain or nimbus clouds.

The last stage of this earthward journeying is reached when
rain water comes to rest on the surface of lakes and oceans as a
liquid mirror that under suitable conditions can freeze into the
rigidity of ice. Ice, in sharpest contrast to hoarfrost, is a solid,
homogeneous mass.

In antimony, the same process takes place in the sphere of
metals. Antimony seems to be a solidified remnant of the metallity
of an earlier period of evolution, when metals were as yet un¬
differentiated. We might say that antimony was precipitated
directly out of an embryonic phase of metallity into earthly form

217

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

without passing through transitional stages. It is a cosmic infant
suddenly transported into earth conditions to which it has not
yet had time to adapt itself. But we can gradually adapt it by
passing it through chemical and physical processes. We can then
discover traces of latent quicksilver, copper and silver character¬
istics in this young metal, all of which reflect phases of a stepwise
descent that antimony by-passed through its sudden precipitation.

Antimony can amalgamate with almost every other metal. In
this respect it reminds us of quicksilver. It melts easily and tends
to form little drops or globules when poured on to a flat surface,
moving in quick parabolic curves with a liveliness again remin¬
iscent of quicksilver. Is there not a parallel here to the way vapour
changes into drop-form and builds up cumulus cloud forma¬
tions? But antimony seems to be trying to get back to the
cirrus cloud form, for when its droplets come to rest on the
dish they are covered with a sparkling ‘hoarfrost* of antimony
oxide.

Antimony shows also a decided inclination to enter into very
complex chemical bonds. Like copper, it forms all sorts of un¬
usual relationships, especially with tartaric acid and tartaric-acid
salts. This comes from the vitality that makes both copper and
antimony capable of effecting so many transformations. Anti¬
mony’s vitalizing forces are well known to medicine. There is a
parallel here also to that further phase of the water-cycle where
moisture descends from the heights to earth and fructifying rain
permeates the ground, collects in lakes and streams, and makes
the earth fertile.

The final stage, when water comes to rest and solidifies into
a mirror of ice, finds its parallel in the forming of the antimony
mirror. Almost all solutions of antimony tend to form mirrors.
Colloidal solutions of antimony and of its compounds produce
the most wonderful mirrors. The silver process enters in here.
But antimony makes it possible also for the radiance of the
cosmos to appear in all the colours of the rainbow. Colloidal
solutions of antimony compounds, particularly those containing
sulphur, coagulate into fiery red, orange and yellow mirrors,
from which wc get such names as antimony ruby, antimony
cinnabar, gold-sulphur, and the like. And wc can recognize

218

THE CHILDHOOD OF METALS

antimony's tendency to create hoarfrost forms even in these
completely solid mirrors, for feathery patterns arc often to be
seen in them.

This infant, antimony, is always longing for its cosmic home*
for a return to the unborn condition. This can be gathered from
a further series of phenomena. If, for example, the gas antimony
hydride is quickly cooled to, say, ioo°C. below freezing point,
leaving the hydrogen to oxidize and thus gradually disappear,
we get a pure but completely unmetal-like form of antimony.
It looks just like sulphur or phosphorus, and is both explosive and
capable of spontaneous combustion. The very low temperature
of — ioo°C. has forced it to condense in a region that lies - to keep
to our metaphor — even above the cirrus cloud belt.

It is quite in character for antimony to be unable to accommo¬
date itself to the earthly salt-condition. Chloride of antimony is
thus a fatty substance, with the fitting name of ‘antimony
butter'. It even behaves like butter in being soluble in ether and
other organic solvents.

Wc see, in fact, that antimony is only on the threshold of
material manifestation as a metal.

These properties of antimony indicate its therapeutic value. In
high dilutions it brings the organism youthful vital forces, not
indiscriminately proliferating, but penetrated with formative
radiations. The fact that it has solidified into this radiating pattern
out of an initial undifferentiated stage makes its effect upon the
blood understandable. For blood also represents a state of equili¬
brium similar to that found in the cumulus cloud formation,
where solidifying and etherealizing processes are in balance.
Antimony regulates this balance, thus becoming a valuable
means of treating haemophilia and other such blood diseases
where there is a lack of formative, coagulative forces in this
liveliest of organs, blood.

ARSENIC

Imagine the youthful qualities of antimony raised to a still
higher level, and we have arsenic. Arsenic has no form at all; it
exists only as a kind of dust. This is a way of saying that it is
extremely dry. It remains a loose powder, and even in compounds

219

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

it almost never becomes a crystal or a mineral structure with any
shape to it.

Arsenic and its compounds normally skip the fluid state and go
directly over from the solid to a vaporous or smokc-likc one.
It is thus always caught up in disintegration, decay, and dusty
dissolution* Hence it is almost impossible to find arsenic any¬
where in nature as a compact mass; it is usually present only as a
trace in other ores, as though particles of cosmic smoke had
drifted into them.

Keeping to our picture, we may say that this smoke-aspect of
arsenic is like a reflection of the cosmic conditions that obtain in
the stratosphere* When the blue sky is veiled by a scarcely
noticeable whiteish haze, as happens particularly often in the
spring, the haze comes from stratus clouds that consist, not of a
compact mass, bur of a transparent high-altitude 'smoke*.

It is often a question whether arsenic really is a metal or belongs
to some other realm beyond the metallic. Arsenic vapour con¬
denses with quick cooling into a phosphorus-like substance
wholly unlike a metal. It is called yellow arsenic, and actually
does behave much as phosphorus does. It is soluble in carbon
disulphide and other organic solvents, and is so volatile that its
penetrating garlic odour carries a long way.

We can perhaps say that arsenic is a substance that marks the
evolutionary moment when metals were helped by phosphorus
to assume material form. The phosphorus process is, as wc have
seen, a midwife for many such births, since its activity embraces
both the loftiest aspects of the spiritual and the depths of ma¬
teriality.

Antimony was called a child among metals ; in the same sense
we must look on arsenic as being at the embryonic stage of
metallic development.

Its therapeutic use is in keeping with the characteristics here
described. It has a drying effect, removing excess fluids from the
organism* Its tonic effect is also understandable; it stimulates the
vegetative processes to retain the fluids on which their functioning
is based and which arsenic threatens to withdraw. This reaction
gives an impetus to the vital forces, but of course only in the
proper minimal doses.

220

THE CHILDHOOD OF METALS

BISMUTH

Bismuth is a heavy metal. Unlike arsenic, it is found in its
native state in rhombic crystal cubes, with feathery cleavage
patterns on their surfaces. Bismuth is extremely brittle and can
easily be reduced to a fine powder. Everything about it gives
the impression of great age and sclerotic forms. Consonant with
this, it is typically found in many cobalt and nickel ores - linked,
that is, with members of the iron family.

On the other hand, bismuth also has childlike qualities such as
those attributed to antimony. Like antimony, it is diamagnetic,
resisting the magnetic field ; and in the neighbourhood of such
a field it even repels electricity.

Despite its earthly heaviness and its old-man’s wrinkles, bismuth
too has not yet adapted itself to earth conditions with regard to
salt-formation; it is incapable of forming regular salts. When,
with the use of a great deal of acid, one finally succeeds in dissolv¬
ing this metal, the addition of a tiny quantity of water is enough
to cause it to precipitate out again in the form of a hydroxide
or a basic salt. All solutions of bismuth salts arc hydrolysed on
coming into contact with water, and a white precipitate results.

One of bismuth’s most interesting properties is that it can be
alloyed with tin and lead. This alloy, known as Wood’s metal,
has such a low melting point that warm water melts it.

All this suggests that bismuth belongs to realms of undiffer¬
entiated childlikeness, but has been overwhelmed by earth forces
which have impressed their sclerotic, old-man qualities upon it.
Bismuth is like a child grown old before its time.

Antimony and bismuth are at opposite ends of the thermo¬
electric series. This means that when the two metals arc brought
into contact with each other and heated, an electric current flows
from the antimony to the bismuth. Atomic physicists say that
antimony has more free electrons than any other metal. These
flow to any other metal capable of absorbing them when the
latter is connected with antimony to form a thermo-electric
element. Bismuth is the metal most richly endowed with this
capacity. This strange phenomenon indicates how like and yet
how opposite bismuth and antimony are.

221

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Bismuth has traces in it of all the metal processes, from Saturn
(lead) to the moon (silver) , but they are so blurred and criss¬
crossed that it would be hard to describe them adequately in the
space at our disposal.

Certainly it is fair to say that antimony, arsenic and bismuth
were once even less solid and less differentiated substances, like
quicksilver, before they were caught by the wave of dcnsification
responsible for the hardening of the earth's crust.

222

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The Spiral of Creation

The findings advanced in previous chapters can be brought
together schematically in the diagram below:

The formative impulses at work in substances of the mineral
earth, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere, spring from the
Zodiac; whereas the impulses active in metals originate in the
planets.

The question to be considered now is whether these formative

223

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

impulses all work in simultaneously and equally on the earth
from its cosmic surroundings, or whether there is evidence of a
law which selects and guides these impulses and causes them to
take effect on the earth in a certain sequence.

An ordering, governing role of this kind may readily be
ascribed to the sun as the central organ of the living cosmic
whole. The sun itself, or some such definite point on its path as
the vernal point, which makes its round of the cosmos once in a
Platonic year, could be the mediator, the regulator of the cosmic
impluses that gave the earth its form. The vernal point might
serve as the outlet through which a formative impulse streams
in to shape an earth always in the making.

The vernal point’s advance from one constellation to another
has marked a corresponding advance from culture to culture in
the course of history. This point now lies in the constellation
Pisces. When it was progressing through Aries, the Graeco-
Roman epoch ran its course. It moved through Taurus during
the Egypto-Chaldean culture, when the leadership principle was
worshipped under the image of the Bulb Earlier still came the
Gemini culture of the Persians, with its central emphasis on the
antithesis of light and darkness, Ormuz d and Ahrimam. Still
prior to this there was the ancient Indian civilization, of which
the Vedas arc only a late echo. The constellation Cancer ruled
this period. As smaller rhythms are always part of similar, larger
rhythms, we may assume that the position of the vernal point
in periods preceding these not only left its mark on human
spiritual development, but decisively affected matter in the
forming of substances.

It takes a Platonic year (25,930 sun years) for the vernal point
to complete one round of the cosmos. If, in its journeying, it is
to transmit and mediate the formative impulses radiating in
upon the earth from the Zodiac, the result of these two inter¬
acting movements is an inward-turning spiral, which would
have to wind its way through all the planetary spheres before
reaching earth.

Indeed, a spiral tendency is the evolutionary pattern more or
less clearly present wherever life has left its imprint or is in process
of developing. An example is found in the morphology of

334

THE SPIRAL OF CREATION

plants. It is not hard to discover the spiral in the arrangement of
leaves around a stalk or in rose-petal patterns.

A spiral is even hidden in the acceleration pattern of a falling
body. An even rate of travel on a spiral path, seen in side eleva¬
tion, produces pendulum-like movements of a length and dura¬
tion that decrease in proportion as their frequency rises. Pendular
morion is governed by laws very similar to those obtaining in
free fall.

A physician discovered that the law of falling bodies applies
also to embryonic development in a striking way. The lengthwise
growth of the embryo is at first almost imperceptible. If measure¬
ments are taken at regular intervals during pregnancy, however,
one fmds that the initial minimal growth-rate speeds up in¬
creasingly, and just before birth makes a tremendous spurt. This
happens also with free-falling objects. The acceleration of a falling

stone can be calculated by the velocity formula V = - t2

In the i st second a stone falls 5 metres
In the 2nd second a stone falls 20 metres
In the 3rd second a stone falls 45 metres
In the 4th second a stone hills 80 metres
In the 5 th second a stone falls 125 metres
In the 6th second a stone falls 180 metres
In the 7th second a stone falls 245 metres
In the 8 th second a stone hills 320 metres
In the 9th second a stone hills 405 metres

We see here that the rate of fall is almost one hundred times as
great in the ninth second as in the first. The rate of increase in
the size of an embryo, determined in monthly measurements, is
roughly proportional to that of falling bodies. We might say
that new-bom human beings fall to earth out of the cosmos
according to the law of falling bodies. We can at least not lightly
dismiss the possibility of a connection between the spiral pattern
and creative processes as witnessed in the development of man,
earth and universe.

As the great spiral of creative evolution rolls in from the
cosmos towards the earth, passing through the various planetary

225

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

spheres as time goes on, it transmits the formative impulses
radiating from the zodiacal constellations to the earth. This
zodiacal radiation would be the sole origin of substances were it
not for the fact that the mediating, ordering, creative force is

always passing through one or other of the planetary spheres.
The planet thus tempers the formative impulses of the con¬
stellation.

On its next round, the in-spiralling path transmits the same
constellation, but has meanwhile entered a planetary sphere
closer to the earth* This gives a different tempering to the creative
action of the constellation. That is why certain earth-substances
resemble each other so closely. They are of the same macrocosmic

2 26

THE SPIRAL OF CREATION

origin, but they also differ as a result of differing planetary
influences*

It is a universal law that smaller cycles are part of larger cycles,
lesser rhythms part of greater ones. These phenomena therefore
have a certain periodicity. There are good reasons to assume that
one of the Platonic years began with Aries, the constellation in
which the vernal point was located at the start of our era. It is
natural to think of Aries as the starting point of the whole cycle of
creation, to picture its evolutionary spiral coming from cosmic
infinitude and entering the realm of our planetary system at the
Saturn sphere and in the Aries segment of the Zodiac.

With the passage of the spiral through the Saturn sphere, the
formative impulse of Aries was stirred to action. Had this been
able to radiate in upon the earth without any interference, it
would have produced a substance that was a simple fixation of
the Aries process. But the fact that the stimulating force was also
in the Saturn sphere meant that a Saturnian tempering was given
to the Aries impulse. Earthly silica was the result. It is easy to see
the Saturnian influence in the properties of silica. One has only
to recall its surface-forming tendency and its connection with the
sense organs, where Aries and Saturn forces work together.

In its further progress, the spiral then passes through the Mars
sphere. As it enters the Aries region on its second round, it again
releases the forces of tins region. But this tune they receive a
Martian tempering, with the resultant earthly creation of titanium
(titanium dioxide), a substance very closely resembling silica.
Like silica, it is a component of primeval rock. Mineralogists call
it rutile. It is a younger brother of silica; physically and chemically
it behaves almost exactly like silica. It betrays the Mars impulse
in its crystalline form, for it docs not crystallize in the aristocratic
columns and pyr amids typical of rock crystal, but in needle form.
The "blood relationship" of the two shows up in the fact that rock
crystal often encloses sheaves of rutile needles. And titanium has
a noteworthy relationship to Mars through its occurrence in
certain iron ores, especially iron rose. And - so wonderfully do
these things fit together - the fragrant red garden roses, which
are the offspring of Mars" creativity in the plant world, contain
titanium in their ash.

227

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

just as the Aries process is modified by the Mars sphere to form
titanium, Mercury modifies it to form zirconium, followed by
cerium and thorium* Thus a group of related earthly substances
comes into being as the original formative impulses undergo
modification by the various planetary spheres*

The silica minerals, then, arc products of the Aries impulse*
Sulphur and its relatives, selenium and tellurium, derive from
Gemini; sodium and the other alkalis - lithium, potassium,
rubidium and caesium - from Virgo ; lime and the mineral alkalis
- strontium, barium and radium - from Libra; aluminium and
its brothers - scandium, yttrium and several other rarer minerals -
from Capricorn; and the halogens, finally, from Pisces.

These groups of related substances recall the Periodic Table,
where they arc also arranged in groups. The Periodic Table
might justifiably be thought of as the final expression of the
creative cosmic symphony, which can be experienced in a more
living way as it sounds through the spiral of creation. The
Periodic Table could be described as a static abstraction. In the
creative spiral, on the other hand, the succession of events in
time is expressed.

Every year, as we know, the vernal point drops back a little,
so that in the course of about two thousand years it passes through
one constellation in the opposite direction to the suns course.
Applying the law of the periodicity of smaller cycles within
larger ones here, we can assume that in the course of each Platonic
year the formative impulse released by the creative spiral drops
back one constellation. Thus, after the Saturn sphere had tem¬
pered the Aries impulse and formed silica, the next creative
impulse would be released in the constellation Taurus before
the end of that Platonic year* Meanwhile the spiral has entered
the Jupiter sphere. The formative impulse of Taurus tempered
by Jupiter leads to the formation of nitrogen. The Jupiter
aspect of nitrogen will be evident in the light of our description
of tin.

The creative spiral then enters the Mars sphere, and again,
before the end of the next Platonic year, releases those Gemini
forces that lead on earth to the forming of sulphur. Similarly,
Cancer, tempered by the sun sphere, produces phosphorus; Leo

228

THE SPIRAL OF CREATION

tempered by Mercury, hydrogen; Virgo tempered by Venus,
sodium; Libra tempered by the moon sphere, calcium.

This would constitute creation in its entirety. But we must
attribute to the moon sphere the same reflective capacity that we
found to be a property of the moon and saw in the physical and
chemical aspects of silver. As the spiral of creation nears the earth,
it passes through the moon sphere, at the same time making a
transit of the reflected spheres of the other planets. Thus we find
not only a moon aspect in calcium, but a Saturnian as well. It is
a peculiarity of lime that silver and lead are often found embedded
in it - a fact that was brought out in Chapter Nineteen. And we
see the formative impulses of Saturn and Libra uniting in the
calcium framework of our bones.

It may be asked here why the Saturn sphere is the one reflected,
when the laws of reflection would lead us to expect it to be Venus.
But on closer study it seems that the reflection here is more in the
nature of a repetition, a recapitulation of an entire cosmic pattern,
in the sense that wave follows wave.

After completing its transit of the reflected Saturn sphere, the
creative spiral enters the reflected sphere of Jupiter, and in con¬
junction with Scorpio releases the forces that form carbon. It is
easy to grasp the connection of Jupiter with carbon if we recall
that its structure of chains and rings makes possible the fashioning
of organic substance. In a picture - carbon’s relatedness to tin
enables it to keep on soldering itself together. The Jupiter process
is a sculptor both in the fluid clement and in our thought-life,
where the power of association links concepts in a ‘train of
thought’, somewhat as carbon forms chains and rings in the
chemical structuring of substances.

To continue; the spiral creates magnesium under the influence
of Sagittarius working in conjunction with the reflected Mars
sphere, and aluminium under Capricorn working with the sun-
sphere. Again, it is not difficult to discern the sun aspect in Capri¬
corn’s aluminium process, which we may remember as the
harmonizing, balancing force at work in gem-stones, especially
tourmaline, while recalling also that aluminium joins forces
with the central directive power of the universe found in the
activity of gold.

229

THE NATURE OF SUBSTANCE

Similarly, oxygen comes into being under the influence of

Aquarius in the reflected Mercury-sphere; and fluorine and the
halogens, finally, originate in the reflected Venus sphere under
the influence of Pisces. }

Again, as fig, 33 shows, the places of origin of these substances
form a spiral that runs counter to the course of the creative spiral,
just as the path of the vernal point in the ecliptic moves counter
to the direction of the sun.

This pattern takes account of the time clement in creative
evolution. It pictures earth’s development from the earliest phase
of material evolution, beginning with a light and air phase,
passing through a fluid state, and only at the very end of creation
becoming solid.

The Periodic Table brings out some of the same facts as the
spiral, but by no means all. There is bound to be a difference
between the living picture drawn in these pages and an abstract
system of numerical tabulation.

The metals, for which there seems to be no suitable place in
the Periodic Table, appear in the spiral as materialized planetary
processes. It would seem natural to put the ‘brothers of iron" that

spring from modifications of the Mars process in the various
reflected planetary spheres, since the modifying forces that
produced them were terrestrial ones that affected the moon’s
reflecting realm.

The emergence of the material world, however, is not to be
thought of as iiaving come about through a kind of short-circuit
between earth and cosmos. Cosmic order weaves and pulsates
through the whole of creation, descending step by step to the
mineral phase of earthly substance. The creative spiral permeates
every level of events - the spiritual, the psychological, the bio¬
logical, the mineral.

‘Wherever lime or magnesium arc found, a plant must have
lived and produced these substances/ says Herzeele. ‘The first
milligramme of lime is no older than the first plant/ Creative
impulses always act first in the organic realm, in organisms. But
wc must conceive of organisms as far less clearly defined in those
early days - still as processes, not yet as isolated single forms.

We must also take into account the fact that the impulses of

230

THE SPIRAL OF CREATION

evolution were not always able to proceed in a straight line,
without interruption. The spiral of creation is to be conceived
rather as a framework which can help us to live into the evolution
of substances. It is not to be taken as a hard and fast system in
every detail, but rather as an attempt to picture the dynamics of
emergent material evolution.

231

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Conclusion

The sun makes music as of old
Among the rival spheres of heaven,

Goethe (translation by Shelley)

In these words, Goethe brings tis an echo of those very ancient
times when human beings still actually heard the sounding
harmonies of the cosmos and felt liow by them heaven and
earth were formed, Plato, one of the last men able to experience
this ground-tone of creation, called it the ‘harmony of the
spheres*.

The cosmos resounds. There is a twelvefold sounding from
the zodiacal constellations, a sevenfold sounding from the
planetary spheres.

The cosmic ‘Word5 described by St. John as having ‘made
every thing that was made5, draws the consonantal framework
of its body from the Zodiac, the sounding vowels of its all¬
permeating music from the planetary spheres. These two elements
combine in ever-new varieties of ways to fashion the world thus
far created and still in process of becoming.

Earth, like heaven, is shaped by the musical ordering power of
this cosmic Word, which reaches into matter itself and gives it
patterns of coherence. Earth is the materialized cosmic Word,
‘the end of God's path5.

When we go out into nature and look at trees and flowers,
stones and mountains, veins of ore, trying to grasp all we see in
a way that will lead us towards the creative archetypes, we can
perhaps catch a glimpse here and there of what lies beneath the
surface. This means beginning to read the divine cosmic Word
again - a reading that frees it from captivity in matter.

The word chemistry comes from the Egyptian ‘chemi’, which
originally meant ‘dark earth*. Later on, it came to mean the
science of obscure, secret things - ‘occult* as opposed to manifest,
accessible knowledge. The ancients could experience cosmic
forces as directly manifest, whereas die earth, as the finished work
of creation, seemed to them, by comparison, hidden and im-

232

CONCLUSION

penetrable. Chemistry, therefore, was knowledge of the "hidden5.

Nowadays the situation is just the opposite* Knowledge of
divine reality is lost ; earth has become the object of our researches.
Physics, chemistry and the other natural sciences have made the
things of earth familiar knowledge. A science that dealt with
divine reality would be called ‘occult5 in the sense that the facts
and foundations of such a study are not "manifest5 to people of
the present time.

Yet if we are to strive for a fulness of knowledge, we must
seek for a scientific outlook which will embrace both halves of
reality, the heavenly as well as the terrestrial.

Astronomy, of course, is not a true science of the heavens in
our sense; it is terrestrial science projected into cosmic space. On
the other hand, the doctrines and dogmas of the various Churches
no longer satisfy modern man, for they cannot bridge the gap
that separates them from terrestrial science, and modern humanity
wants to know , not simply to believe.

We have attempted to show here how it is possible, while
maintaining scientific exactness, to feel one's way towards the
living laws of the world ; to find and unravel the threads which
lead from earthly matter to its origin in the creative spheres of
the cosmos. This book was meant to be a contribution to dis¬
cerning the pulse-beat of the cosmic organism. The author's hope
is that it may encourage further progress, through which these
unfinished first steps will be justified.

233

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